Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  Lesgath swore. He hadn’t sensed a thing.

  The outside door swung shut. ‘He didn’t send that note; I did.’ For a moment the darkness was complete, then a Magor sword glowed softly and the figure standing in front of the door was thrown into relief.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lesgath asked, and his mouth went dry. Arrant’s sword was working.

  ‘Come to teach you a lesson, you creepy little dunghill. You went too far today, Lesgath. It’s one thing to spread rumours, or muck up my scrolls with ink, or melt my wax tablets. It’s quite another to interfere with a mount I’m using. Quite apart from the fact that you could have endangered me, I won’t stand for animals being hurt by a poisonous serpent like you.’

  Lesgath smiled, his heart lifting. No one knew, except Arrant. He hadn’t told anyone, the stupid moonling. ‘So, what are you going to do about it? Use your sword on me? You’d be kicked out of the Academy.’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s just to give us some light. But I am going to give you the thrashing you deserve.’

  Lesgath laughed. He was two years older and a recent growth spurt meant he was now much taller and heavier than Arrant. There was no way the Tyranian bastard would beat him in a fist fight. He waited until Arrant jammed the point of his sword into the earthen floor so his weapon remained upright, casting light in a circle, then he pounced. To his surprise, Arrant wasn’t there. He’d leaped sideways, and as Lesgath floundered off balance, he was seized by the neck of his bolero and the seat of his trousers. He struggled, swinging his arm backwards, trying to hit Arrant’s nose. Before he could find his target, he was unbalanced still further, as Arrant pushed his head down towards the water trough and kicked at the back of his knee. Horror dawned as he realised he was in trouble. How had the bastard done all that so quickly?

  He grabbed at the front side of the trough and tried to lever himself upwards. He might have done it too, only Arrant kneed one of his wrists and his arm collapsed down into the water. A hard shove to the back of his head plunged his face below the surface. He spluttered and struggled and tried not to breathe. The water tasted heavily of shleth. And Arrant held him there. For one wild, despairing moment, he thought the sod was going to drown him.

  Then Arrant hauled him out and threw him face down on the ground. While he was still choking, drawing air into his lungs in gasping shudders, a foot was planted on his left wrist to ensure that his cabochon was flat to the ground.

  ‘Not bad for a lad trained by a mongrel army, eh, Lesgath? You see, when people don’t have Magor power to rely on, they learn other ways to fight, and I was well taught. Don’t ever underestimate me, or you’ll end up dead.’

  No sooner had he stopped speaking than the stable was plunged into darkness. Lesgath was vaguely aware that the door opened and closed, and he was left alone. For the first time in his life, he had been thoroughly humiliated, and he was having a hard time believing it.

  Outside, Arrant paused to sheath his sword. He was grinning, and addressed the weapon in a whisper. ‘For once, you decided to stop working at just the right moment.’ And then he drew in a deep breath and set off back to the Mirager’s Pavilion. In his heart, he knew this hadn’t been the end of the fight; it was just the beginning.

  ‘Temel, it’s cold out here at this time of the evening. Shall I get your cloak?’

  Temellin gave a faint smile. ‘Mothering me again, Garis? I’m not cold.’ He held up his hand, gesturing for silence. ‘Listen. They are singing for me. They know I can’t see any of the things about them that are still beautiful, so they sing for me. I come here every evening to hear them.’

  Garis looked around. There wasn’t much to see. The Mirager was sitting on a gentle grassy slope that led down to a distant Ravage sore. Temellin’s shleth grazed nearby, nervously avoiding a clump of long grass that was humming a complex melody and exuding a pleasant smell. ‘Your son’s way of saying goodnight?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I like the smell.’

  ‘A whole year, Garis, and all we seem to be doing is running on the same spot. And we have to battle so hard to do that. We lost another man yesterday, bitten in half by a beast.’

  ‘I heard. Here’s something to cheer you, I hope. I came out here to give it to you. It just arrived—a letter-scroll from Sarana.’

  Temellin’s face lit up. ‘Read it to me.’

  Garis opened the scroll case and started to read aloud by the light of his cabochon, blessing Sarana’s reluctance to write love letters. She could have been writing to her moneymaster.

  Temellin, the war here goes no better than yours, I fear. We are bogged down in snow-season rains at the moment, and snow has closed all the passes. My navy blockades Janussian ports in the hope of cutting off supplies to their invading army, and Gevenan swears he will send them packing next summer.

  However, I write regarding another matter. The Ravage beasts.

  I always thought they were the manifestations of abstract things, like hate and malice and greed. I saw the unpleasant side of myself in them. No, they showed me that unpleasant side. It was a nasty experience, like being brought before the gods for judgement and having to acknowledge that you are not as nice as you had fooled yourself into thinking you were. There is something very evil about them, yet there is something so human, too. And I don’t mean that in a noble sense. The snide assessment in their eyes, the avaricious cunning of their smiles, the gleeful mockery of their laughter…

  I was struck by another thought last night, hence this letter. Although we Magor can feel the presence of animals, we do not feel their emotions. That is something we can only do with humans—and the Ravage. Perhaps we should think on this.

  I suggest you send Arrant to the library in Madrinya. Ask him to talk to Illuser-reftim about the books and scrolls that the Mirage Makers gave to me. They were new then, but they are copies of things so ancient they predate our nation’s memories. Perhaps the answer is not in the present—but in the past.

  My thoughts go with you all, as always,

  Sarana

  Temellin nodded his thanks, but didn’t speak for so long, Garis began to wonder if he was falling asleep. Then he roused himself to say in an amused way, ‘She shames me.’

  Garis was startled. ‘In what way?’

  ‘I never thought to look for a non-violent solution. She’s right, of course. We ought to be devoting more of our time to working out what the Ravage is and where it came from. Only when we understand it, will we know its weaknesses and how to defeat it. Send this letter to Arrant, Garis. Tell him it is my wish that he and Tarran follow her suggestion.’ He scrambled to his feet and whistled to his shleth. ‘Come, ride with me back to Raker’s Camp. I am hungry.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘Do you think that Sarana thinks the Ravage beasts were once humans?’ Arrant asked Tarran, as they walked to the library.

  Tarran was indignant. And we are some kind of jailors? Trapping them inside us? I think we’d remember that, don’t you?

  Arrant thought Tarran sounded unsettled and said, ‘You don’t much like the idea of investigating the nature of the Ravage, do you?’

  Just worried what we’ll find out.

  ‘Perhaps Mirage Makers were human once.’

  Tarran snorted. Of course they weren’t. Human-like, maybe.

  ‘You don’t really know that. You don’t remember back as far as your beginnings. The Magor believe you were once people who started making illusions until the illusions took on solidity and the people lost reality, until they were no more than their own creations. Hundreds of years afterwards, they clashed with Kardis who had a talent for illusion, which is when the Covenant came into being.’

  So? People aren’t necessarily human. For all you know, we were the clawed folk who made your necklet.

  Arrant, who had not even thought of that, was fascinated. ‘Is that poss—?’

  No, it is not! We can’t even read those runes.

  ‘What I really don�
�t understand is why my mother thinks these books could be helpful. After all, aren’t the contents of all those texts inside your memories somewhere? If there was something useful in them, you Mirage Makers would already know it, surely.’

  Tarran was slow to answer. Your mother, he said at last, has an interesting, analytical mind. And one that has developed since the time we knew her in the Mirage, all those years ago. Perhaps she has fingered something that may be of import.

  ‘Which is?’

  Humans and Mirage Makers can look at the same object, yet see two different things.

  The library was a pleasant room, designed to be bright with diffused sunlight deflected inwards from outer walls whitewashed with lime. The smell of old parchment, vellum and newly made reed-and-wood shelving all combined to give the place a distinctive and not-unpleasant odour, bringing back childhood memories. An Assorian moneymaster’s library, if he remembered correctly, in Getria. That was the place he had first fallen in love with the idea of libraries and reading.

  Reftim the librarian was a plump man, with red cheeks and a round puff-ball nose. He should have had a jovial nature to match his looks. Instead, he was a tense, fidgety man, given to long periods of silence and, Arrant suspected, guilt-ridden introspection. I know the signs, he said ruefully to Tarran. Although I hope I don’t look as harassed. What the librarian had to be guilty about, though, he hadn’t the faintest idea.

  I shall tell you, Tarran volunteered, afterwards.

  Good. It drives me crazy.

  As he explained to Reftim why Sarana had sent him, the man gazed at a point somewhere over his shoulder. Arrant had to restrain a desire to look behind himself to see who was there. By the time he had finished explaining what he wanted, though, the librarian’s eyes gleamed with the shine of a man in his element. He scurried across to a book cabinet along the wall, talking over his shoulder. ‘The nature of the Ravage? I have just the text. It has always been my contention that no one pays enough attention to our literature; we can learn so much from the past.’

  He opened the cabinet and ran a gloved finger along the vellum covers. ‘We Kardis lost so much of our written past when the Tyranians came. Most of the valuable texts were kept in the pavilions you see, and they were burned. It was a great blessing that the Mirage Makers gave these to your—to the Miragerin-sarana. They are not at all old, of course. Books didn’t exist when these were first written. They were probably recorded originally as wax tablets, then later as scrolls. It was the Assorians who had the idea of binding many scrolls inside vellum covers for their accounts ledgers. And thus the book was born.’

  Arrant’s eyes rolled up as Reftim chattered on, and he growled at Tarran, Stop that!

  Well, he is a prosy old bore.

  He’s going to be an angry old bore if he thinks I’m being rude, Arrant said, regaining control of his eyeballs.

  Reftim took a book down from its shelf and laid it reverentially on a nearby table, where he turned over pages, looking for the relevant passage. ‘The book itself is the history of a man called Nadim. He was a Kardi living in the days before the Covenant, one of those whose illusive powers upset the real Mirage Makers. One of the first, in fact, to have real intellectual contact with the Mirage. The trouble is that, although the book tells an early story, we don’t know who wrote it, or when it was first written down—it’s very doubtful that the original writer was contemporary with Nadim himself. I suspect the language is much more modern than that. This actual volume is one of those created out of Mirage memory, given to your mother—’ He blushed, mottling red and white as if Arrant had caught him ripping pages out of the library’s most precious volume.

  Huh? What’s all that about? Arrant asked.

  Tell you later, Tarran replied.

  Reftim, recovering, found the correct page and added, ‘We don’t know if it is an accurate copy. We don’t know if it is legend or history or fiction.’

  Do you know this story? Arrant asked Tarran, as he read the first few lines.

  Yes, of course. It’s an old tale. But you read it without talking to me about it. That should be the whole idea behind this exercise: whether you can see something that we Mirage Makers don’t.

  Arrant nodded and began to read.

  Nadim was riding between Kilsodar and Metra, two vale villages to the west of Labinya, when he came across a Mirage. In length it measured not even half a day’s ride; its width was even less than its length. Nadim, in great fear and wonder, entered the place riding on his shleth, Gyrlan. Gyrlan was the most favoured of all his steeds, an animal of speed and great cunning, and friendship between man and beast was as close a brotherhood as swordblade to scabbard.

  Great was the beauty of this mirage. Silver waters streaked with verdigris sparkled over stones of red and orange and gold, and the waters were filled with swimming beasts and weirdling creatures. The flowers and plants were strange indeed to Nadim’s eyes, for where else would he have found, when he lay to rest beside the waters, such vines as those that caressed him, first arousing his manhood and then satisfying the longing of his arousal? Where else could he have heard maidens singing sweetness from within the flowers as he passed by? Many were the curious episodes Nadim knew then.

  But all was not well within this magicked Paradise. In the beauty there lurked a Horror that not even brave Nadim had the courage to face with steadfast heart, nor yet Gyrlan, his mount, could pass with firm tread.

  This Horror was a Scourge, a Sore of Evil, that ate at the heart of the Mirage’s beauty, with its foulness streaming forth to corrode. And within this putrid liquid swam obscene Greed, and cynical Hypocrisy and cruel Depravity and all those things the makers of this Paradise had tried to leave behind when they remade themselves.

  The Evil flowed out to surround Nadim and Gyrlan, and the creatures therein reached out to clutch and rend man and mount. Nadim slashed at them with his sword, but where he made two, both lived, and his enemies were doubled. So, when all his battling achieved naught but further trials, he mounted brave Gyrlan and put the steed with courageous heart at such a leap as will be remembered for all time. Impossible for such a spring to succeed—the Scourge was surely too wide—yet the great Gyrlan hurdled the ravaging sore even as its hideous creatures threw themselves upwards to disembowel him with their talons. They brought death to Gyrlan, but he landed his rider safely on the other side of the Sore. There his blood and entrails spilled from his belly, draining his life from him.

  Deep was the grief of Nadim as he bade his steed goodbye; many were the tears he shed, ere he walked forth from that Mirage, swearing never to return to such a place, no matter how enticing its beauty. For Evil is never obliterated. It is ever with us.

  Arrant looked up, to catch Reftim’s eye across the room. The librarian looked away immediately to a point somewhere over Arrant’s head. Just what did he do, Tarran, that makes him so jumpy around me?

  Oh, he tried to poison Sarana once when she was imprisoned under his care. My mother put him up to it, but Sarana sensed the poison. Which was just as well, because she was pregnant with you at the time.

  Arrant felt his eyes widen. In prison? Ravage hells, there’s a lot about my mother I don’t know, isn’t there?

  Heaps. Better you don’t know most of it. But that’s why Reftim acts so oddly around you. He’s as embarrassed as a skinned wood possum—he almost murdered you before you were born.

  As he thanked the librarian for his help, Arrant had trouble hiding his bemused shock.

  Out in the sunshine again, he delayed returning to the Mirager’s Pavilion. He found a deserted corner of the gardens of the Theuros Academy instead and sat down on the stone bench there. ‘I need to think,’ he told Tarran. A flock of keyet parrots appeared out of nowhere and dived into the pomegranates lining the wall, from where they gazed at him in an interested way as though they expected to be fed. ‘I need to pick your brains. The Mirage Makers’ memory.’

  Go ahead.

  ‘The Ravage be
asts eat the Mirage, and multiply. The Ravage sores erode away at you and grow in size. What sustains you, the Mirage Makers?’

  Our power. Which comes, ultimately, from the same places yours does. From the sun, from the spinning of the earth, and the pull of the world and the moon.

  ‘Really? That sounds, well, bizarre. The moon pulls us? Pulls us where? And if the world spins, why don’t we all go flying off it? Or get dizzy or something?’

  No idea. We just feel the power and feed off it; we don’t understand how it works. From his tone, Arrant guessed he didn’t much care, either, and didn’t understand why Arrant asked.

  ‘Ah. Right. I’ll accept that. And let’s accept, too, that Mirage Makers started out, er, human-like. Their creativity and artistry became the Mirage. Their sense of humour became the Mirage’s eccentricities—’

  Eccentricities? Tarran was indignant. We are not eccentric! You are the ones who are odd.

  ‘Be quiet and listen. More unpleasant human-like traits had no place in the beauty of the Mirage. So they were encapsulated and ignored. The Mirage Makers strove to build only on the beauty and the good things about themselves.’

  Shiver the sands! You are saying we created the Ravage? From ourselves? We have no memory of doing that.

  ‘Well, that’s what the writer of the Nadim story implied. “All those things the makers of this Paradise had tried to leave behind when they remade themselves.” Is it possible?’

  Tarran’s confusion was a background whisper in Arrant’s mind. Our memories are hazy. Our recollection of once being separate beings is there, but it is so—so vague. None of the others can ever remember having a name, for example. In fact, to them, to be a separate individual would be their idea of, well, Hades, I suppose. They don’t understand how I can stand being with just one entity—you. The idea appals them. When I first visited you, they were always trying to drag me back to them, thinking I would go moondaft in your head. He paused. With some justification.