Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  ‘I put you in danger.’ Arrant faltered with his apology. ‘I—I am so sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault. It was theirs, the Mirage Makers. They vanished, didn’t they? Long before they should have. We should have considered the possibility, even if it hadn’t happened before. I’m paying a heavy price, but so be it. Had you died, the price would have been unbearable. Beyond any hell of any religion’s devising. Believe that, Arrant. Because it is a truth I can’t even begin to explain to you.’

  He sat up and pulled Arrant’s head down to his chest, and stroked his hair as if his son were a small boy again. And for the briefest of moments, Arrant’s cabochon worked and he felt a surge of love swell through him, then ebb like an ocean wave passing on its way. He sighed as the colour in his cabochon faded.

  His father may not have seen the colour vanish, but he must have felt the power seep away because he said, ‘You have a purpose even though you may not yet know what it is. Never doubt it. Being blind is not so very bad for one of the Magoroth, you know. For instance, I can tell you where every person in this camp is at this precise moment. I know who they are. I can tell you how they feel as they go about their business. I don’t need to see their faces. I even know where every shleth is tethered.’

  His father’s courage made Arrant choke with pride. Temellin the Mirager was already considering his strengths, not his weakness.

  ‘Now, tell me, was your brother there?’

  Arrant sat up, burying his own weakness deep. ‘No.’ He hesitated. This wasn’t the time to speak of the reality of Tarran. He drew in a deep breath and wadded his emotions tight. ‘No, he wasn’t there. I need to talk to you about him, but it can wait. More urgently, the Mirage Makers had a message for you. They are all dying, my brother included. They spoke as if they are close to the end.’

  ‘Ah.’ Temellin moved uncomfortably, whether in pain or grief or worry, Arrant couldn’t tell. ‘That is not good news. Although “close to the end” may be a while yet, when time is counted by a being that has lived hundreds of years. Still, I did wonder if the only thing that would account for their disappearance before they saw you safely to the rake would be a disaster in the Mirage.’

  ‘There’s more. And it’s not good, either.’ Arrant swallowed and told his father all the Mirage Makers had said about the Ravage and the wind.

  There was a long silence before Temellin spoke again. The sadness in his voice then said it all. ‘When the legions were defeated, I thought our fighting days were over. It seems I was wrong.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘I need to take this to the Council. We thought to obey the Covenant and stay away from the Mirage, but it has not helped the Mirage Makers nor, it seems, our own future. Perhaps we need to break the Covenant yet again and return to the Mirage. Perhaps we need to fight again, a different kind of battle this time, and one I have little stomach for. Too many of us will die. Yet not to fight—that cannot even be an option, for if this battle is lost, it seems Kardiastan dies.’ His fingers fiddled restlessly with the cloak covering him. ‘I haven’t received any reports of Ravage beasts appearing in Kardiastan yet, but they could have. The areas closest to the Shiver Barrens are sparsely settled.’

  Arrant was silent. He recalled his dreams and tried to imagine those creatures let loose on the waking world. In a city street perhaps. Slavering jaws. Gleaming eyes. Insatiable hunger to rend and tear and consume…

  ‘The Mirage Makers—were they able to help you concerning your powers?’ Temellin asked.

  ‘They said my power is there, I just don’t know how to use it. They didn’t seem to know why, except to say they doubted I would ever learn. They didn’t think I’d ever be able to use my sword.’

  Another long silence.

  ‘Papa, is it my fault?’

  ‘Is it someone’s fault if they are born with overly large feet or a withered arm?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you have your answer.’ His clasp on Arrant’s hand tightened. ‘You must write to Sarana and tell her what happened here today, before she hears some other way.’

  Arrant nodded, and then remembered his father couldn’t see. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You’re not still angry with her, are you, over Brand?’

  He thought about that, surprised to realise how hard it was to remember the extent of his resentment and jealousy. ‘It seems so stupid now,’ he admitted. He had the sudden thought that if he’d been foolish about his mother’s relationship with the men in her life, then maybe he’d been foolish about other things too. He said, ‘I remember you talking to her when we were in Ordensa. I heard you say you didn’t want me and even then I knew you couldn’t lie. I remember being upset.’

  ‘Did I say that? I’m sorry you heard it. It was only true in one sense. Of course I wanted you to stay. Both of you. But I was worried more for your safety in the Mirage, because of the Ravage, than in Tyrans, where all we had to worry about were legionnaires. Besides, I didn’t want to deprive Sarana of you, or you of your mother. Arrant, she was so alone. She was surrounded by enemies, running for her life, trying to build something worthwhile out of a corrupt and rotting empire. Perhaps it was revenge she needed, but she also did it for us. For Kardiastan. So that we could be free. That would never have happened, had she not brought the Exaltarchy to its knees. You were all she really had then. She loved you. It tore her in two to bring you to Ordensa with the intention of giving you up. Her pain sliced so deep she couldn’t hide it from me. How could I tell her I wanted you? So I told her instead that a child’s place was with his mother. Sending you away was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. When you have children of your own perhaps you’ll understand just how difficult.’

  He fell silent, thinking. Remembering, perhaps. When he did speak again, it was to change the subject. It was time to go on with living, as though nothing had happened. ‘Arrant, hand me my clothes, will you? We need to get moving if we are to start back to Madrinya. And Garis and Samia have a long way to go to get to Asufa.’

  His courage stopped Arrant’s breath in his throat.

  ‘Oh,’ Temellin added, ‘one other thing. Remember back there in the Shiver Barrens when I told you to leave me behind?’

  ‘Uh, yes.’

  ‘Next time you disobey a direct order from your Mirager, I am going to have you shovelling manure in the pavilion stables for the next year and a half. Is that clear?’

  Arrant grinned. ‘Perfectly, Mirager-temellin.’

  ‘Good. I am proud of you.’

  Garis stared as Temellin moved among the men. The kerchief he’d had around his neck when they’d left Madrinya, he now wore as a bandage over his eyes, and he no longer strode as he once would have. Someone had tied two shleth prods together for him to use as a walking stick. His steps were tentative on the uneven rock, yet he smiled and chatted as if there was nothing different from the day before, as if nothing had changed, as if he didn’t need time to adjust to the horror that had overtaken him so swiftly.

  ‘Dry hells, now there goes a man,’ he murmured.

  ‘I can’t sense his emotions,’ Samia said, standing at her father’s shoulder. ‘He hides everything in a way I’ve never felt him do before.’

  ‘A man often does when he feels too much grief.’

  She shivered. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘We’ll leave this morning. We will ride with the others as far as the paveway.’ He looked down at her. ‘I thought you might be sorry to go back. You seemed to get on well with Arrant.’

  She shook her head as if exasperated at his lack of perspicacity. ‘Well, he’s only a sprout. But it’s not that. It’s just that—well, he hurts too much. All the time. I don’t like it.’

  He stared at her, surprised. ‘You mean you can sense his emotions? No one else seems to have much success.’

  ‘Um, no, I can’t feel the ordinary surface emotions that keep changing, either. It’s what’s underneath. There’s so much sor
row, and it—it looms so large. It’s like a big dark animal inside him. I don’t like being around him. It’s too sad.’

  Garis didn’t say a word, but the dismay he felt was overwhelming.

  ‘There’s something else too. Something odd. He has wounds like burns around his neck. They haven’t responded very well to healing, and they weren’t made by the sands either. They feel—’ She struggled to find the right words. ‘Foreign. The other healers are puzzled too.’

  ‘His necklet?’ he ventured.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Shiverdamn, where are we all going with this?’ he wondered, riddled with anxiety. ‘Ah, Sarana, I wish you were here.’

  That morning, when Ligea cradled the clay in her palm and studied Temellin’s expression, she knew something was wrong. His eyes were lifeless. Her hand trembled as she stared. No. She would not believe it. She would never believe it. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t.

  She put the head back in its niche, watched it turn to a formless lump. She waited an endless, torturing moment, and then picked it up once more. This time he was smiling, a sad smile, but still—his expression had changed. He couldn’t, then, be dead. She started breathing again.

  Yet there was something wrong. His eyes…

  Dear sweet gods of Elysium. His eyes. This was the gaze of a sightless man.

  She sank down onto the nearby divan, her head bowed over the sculpture she cradled in her hands, as if she could protect it from harm. As if she could protect him from harm. Knowing as she wept that it was already too late.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Arrant waited before he sought another private moment with his father. Temellin was still fatigued by the battering he had suffered under the Shiver Barrens and by the healing necessary afterwards, not to mention the emotional shock he suffered from knowing he was blind and likely to remain so for the rest of his life. Arrant didn’t want to put him under more stress, so he waited. They stayed another night on the rake, and then headed back to the Three Wells Wayhouse. That evening in the wayhouse, he penned a difficult letter to his mother, explaining what had happened. There was no easy way to do it, and when he’d finished, he felt emotionally empty, a hollow shell of what was possible. In the morning he would give the scroll to Garis, who would be heading south with Samia. They would take it as far as Asufa and then send it on by paid courier to Tyr.

  He turned in for the night, but before he could fall asleep, Tarran came to him.

  Relief shuddered through Arrant’s body at the familiar touch in his mind. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, sitting bolt upright on his pallet. ‘Please don’t leave again. Please! I’m sorry about everything.’

  There was a short silence, as if Tarran didn’t know what to say. Then, I’m sorry too.

  ‘I’d like to talk about it.’

  Me too. We should have talked it out.

  ‘It wasn’t as bad as it seemed, really. I just didn’t know how to tell him about you when you weren’t there.’

  I shouldn’t have ransacked your memories without your permission. And I was wrong not to turn up in the Shiver Barrens. It was your first chance to meet a physical manifestation of me—and I denied it to you. I guess I wanted to punish you. It was not nice of me. And the other Mirage Makers have scolded me nonstop about it ever since.

  ‘We were both such—such sprouts. I am sorry, truly. Tarran—what went wrong? Why did the Mirage Makers leave so quickly?’

  Another Ravage attack. The worst ever. Every Ravage beast in every sore rebelled against us. We had no choice; we have to be whole at times like that. There were deaths, Arrant. We are fewer than we used to be.

  ‘Oh!’ He was shocked. He had not known that individual Mirage Makers could die while the Mirage itself went on living. ‘That’s—that’s awful.’

  We have to get used to losing part of ourselves. Things will only get worse.

  ‘You don’t know what happened to us, do you?’

  To whom? When?

  ‘To me. To Temellin. In the Shiver Barrens. I couldn’t find my way back, and Temellin came to help. The sands blinded him, Tarran.’ He opened up his memories of all that had occurred and allowed his brother to see.

  Tarran’s shock flamed through his head. Oh no. No, no, no. Oh Ravage hells, this is my fault! Why wasn’t I there? I should have been there. If I had, it wouldn’t have happened!

  Arrant winced. His head ached as though it were clamped in a blacksmith’s vice. He said, ‘If you had been there, you would have disappeared with the other Mirage Makers. It was no one’s fault. It just happened.’

  There was a short silence. Then, I suppose so. It just seems…

  ‘So bloody stupid. I know.’

  I suppose you called me. If you did, I didn’t hear you, because of the Barrens. I am so, so sorry.

  They were both silent again.

  Then Arrant said slowly, ‘A strange coincidence, wasn’t it. Just when I needed help to leave the Barrens, everyone was pulled back to the Mirage by what the Ravage was doing.’

  What are you trying to say?

  ‘Could they—the Ravage beasts—could they have known where I was?’

  He felt Tarran’s assent. They know most things about us, and we know about you. But why would they single you out?

  ‘Why did they send me Ravage dreams when I was a mere child in Tyrans? It must have been them, because I knew what they looked like before I saw your memories of them. Did they want to scare me away? To make sure I never came here to Kardiastan? Perhaps they thought I was special.’ He shrugged unhappily. ‘The son of Ligea and Temellin should have been special, a Magor warrior of unusual strength and skill.’

  Tarran thought about that, then added, Maybe it’s because they realised you and I would be able to link, and they don’t want the Mirage Makers chatting to the Magor on an everyday basis. He paused, then added, It’s a pity we aren’t as clever at reading their twisted minds as they seem to be about reading ours.

  Arrant shivered. The idea that the Ravage would go to those lengths to kill him was terrifying.

  Fear crawled around the edge of his thoughts, and it was an effort to keep it from Tarran. ‘We have to talk to Temellin about this. If the Ravage doesn’t want us talking to each other, then we’d better start talking. If they really did want me dead, then we have to find out why they fear me, because I’ll be damned if I can think of anything.’

  Oh, I don’t know. I think your mind is a very scary place…

  Arrant smiled. The old Tarran was back, and he was glad.

  With Tarran still in his head, he went to knock on his father’s door at dawn, and found him awake. He was sitting by the window with the shutters open. Beyond was the atrium, still shadowed, where fish swam in lazy circles around the base of the fountain, and water trickled from stone fish mouths.

  ‘It’s strange,’ Temellin said, without turning around. ‘I find I like to see the dawn. The night is too dark—if awake, I see nothing…Then the sun rises, and I see the light. My world takes on form. There’s an atrium out there, isn’t there? I can hear the water and sense the fish. And your cabochon is working this morning. I can feel the power. What brings you here so early?’

  ‘I need to talk. It’s time to tell you about Tarran.’

  ‘Ah. You said he wasn’t in the Shiver Barrens.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. But that first day that we met, I didn’t tell you the truth. I didn’t exactly lie, but the truth wasn’t there either. That was wrong of me.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I understand. What didn’t you tell me?’ Temellin turned to face him and indicated a nearby chair.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Arrant came forward and sat down. ‘When we were in Ordensa, and I was five, I had a Ravage dream. No one had ever told me about the Ravage, yet I dreamed they threatened me. That was the night Tarran first came to me. He has been coming to me ever since. He is inside my head right now.’

  Temellin stood up ab
ruptly. ‘I don’t think I want to hear this.’

  Arrant took no notice. ‘I spoke to the Mirage Makers when I was under the Shiver Barrens. One of the things we spoke of was Tarran and all that we had been to each other over the years. If he had been imaginary, they wouldn’t know about that, would they?’

  Temellin, fumbling for his chair, sat down again. He sat so still he could have been made of marble. Arrant waited.

  It’ll be all right, Tarran said. You’ll see. He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his tone.

  Sweet Hades, do you know how hard this is? Arrant asked. He’s wondering if I’ve been staring at the madman’s moon.

  When Temellin spoke again, his tone was so neutral it did nothing to allay Arrant’s anxiety. ‘Start at the beginning and tell me everything.’

  Arrant began again, groping for words that didn’t seem to want to come. He told him everything he knew, not just about Tarran, but also about his Ravage dreams. He couldn’t feel his father’s doubt, but he was sure it was there. His hurt at Temellin’s earlier disbelief, at Ligea’s dismissal of his imaginary playmate, dragged itself out, and he felt it again, fresh and humiliating. Doggedly, he continued.

  At the end of his tortured recital, he added, ‘You can sense that I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘I can sense a deliberately told lie, not the absolute truth, or otherwise, of a statement. There is a difference. All I can tell is that you believe what you say is true. The issue is whether you are deceived.’

  ‘Like the madman at the Rift Wayhouse? Hearing voices in my head?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Blind eyes stared at him, and Arrant stared back. They both kept their pain encapsulated and unreadable. ‘So what will you believe?’ Arrant asked. ‘That I’ve lost my reason?’

  Tarran interrupted. You really can be a shleth’s arsehole, Arrant. You wouldn’t want an idiot father who’d believe any kind of weird story without thinking about it would you? He’s a ruler, for Mirage sake! He has to be sceptical.