Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  Arrant stared. The man was only five years older than Temellin.

  ‘Perhaps there was nothing we could have done,’ Temellin said gently. ‘After all, the Mirage Makers themselves thought it would be my other son who would make the difference.’

  ‘Pinar died for nothing,’ Firgan said, his voice harsh. ‘Her son was sacrificed for nothing. In all probability, Ligea misinterpreted what was required—’

  Temellin changed in an instant. They all felt it: the transformation into a man as dangerous to his enemies as a predator to its prey. ‘Sarana saw the same vision I did, Firgan. There was no room for misinterpretation. For some reason, Pinar’s son has not been able to do what they hoped; that’s all.’

  ‘You have one flawed son; perhaps the other was too.’

  Told you once he was as nasty as a Ravage beast, Tarran said.

  Korden winced and lowered his gaze.

  He’s ashamed, Arrant said, noticing. He’s finally ashamed of his son.

  ‘Get out of my room,’ Temellin said, his voice dropping several registers to a note that made Arrant shiver, ‘before Sarana and I show you the real power of a Mirager’s sword and teach you a little respect.’

  Firgan stood up, shrugged and headed for the door. Just before he exited, he added, ‘If you want my respect, then tell us how to save the Mirage. But then, I suppose that’s too much to expect of a blind man and a Tyranian compeer bitch.’ He closed the door behind him with more force than necessary.

  Sarana fixed Korden with a hard stare. ‘And this is the man you want as the next Mirager, Korden? You’d better think again.’

  Korden, upset, wouldn’t look at her as he answered. ‘He is devastated. His grief makes him tactless. This is a tragic day for us, after all.’ Then realising he was making excuses for something inexcusable, he bowed his head, and followed his son out.

  Sarana snorted. ‘“Tactless”. I am glad he explained that. I would never have known.’

  ‘I almost killed Firgan, right then,’ Temellin said, shaking his head. ‘He’ll never know how close he came to death. Arrant, go and see if Korden gets to his seat all right, will you? And then ask a healer to look at him. I don’t think he is at all well.’

  Arrant nodded and did as he was asked. When he stepped outside, it was to find that Firgan had already disappeared into the main hall. Korden, though, leaned against the hall doorway, sweat trickling down his cheeks and neck.

  Arrant went to him and touched his shoulder. ‘Magori? Are you all right?’

  The look Korden turned on him was terrible. His mouth worked but no words came out. His emotions had slipped free, but were muddled and senseless, like a child’s babbling.

  He’s ill, Tarran said. Really ill.

  Ryval strode towards them, preceded by a wave of dislike and red-hot rage. ‘What’s the matter with him? What have you done to my father?’

  Before Arrant could answer, Korden roused himself enough to shake a finger at Ryval. ‘He’s a viper, your brother. A murderer! Did you know too—did you? Maybe all of you are vipers. Turning on your own family. Lesgath, oh, my son. And my little Serenewaaaa…’ Half of his face went slack, slurring the words into nonsense. One of his legs collapsed under him and Arrant only just managed to catch him before he fell. Gently, he lowered Korden to the floor.

  ’Ware, Tarran said. Firgan.

  Ryval was still gaping at his father, caught unawares by his accusations, and it was Firgan now who was raging at Arrant, ordering him away. Arrant stood and backed off, glad enough to go. People milled around, offering healing help. Gretha came, trailed by Elvena, Serenelle and several of her other children, only to wring her hands in useless lament. More and more people crowded into the passage.

  Arrant turned away, intending to tell his parents what was happening, but Serenelle blocked his way.

  ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ she asked quietly.

  He glanced over to where people were lifting Korden up. He nodded. ‘In his brain, I think. He’s paralysed. He’s not dead, though.’ Not yet.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Firgan’s going to kill you. He knows your parents want you to be the Miragerin’s heir.’

  ‘You told him?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘He threatened you.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I’m not very brave, Arrant.’

  She turned and began to walk away but he called after her. ‘Serenelle.’

  She stopped and looked back.

  ‘Your father knows Firgan murdered Lesgath. Was it you who told him?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Firgan will guess it was you.’

  She gave a slight smile and gestured to where her father was being borne away. ‘He was my only protection. I gambled when I told him the truth about Firgan, and I just lost.’

  ‘Go to the Mirager’s Pavilion. Right now. Ask for Hellesia. Tell her I said you were to be given a room in the Mirager’s apartments. And stay there.’

  She stared, then nodded, adding softly, ‘Samia is a lucky woman.’

  People pushed between them, and someone asked him what had happened, grabbing him by the arm. By the time he had answered and freed himself, Serenelle had gone.

  He returned to the Mirager’s room with the news. Temellin disappeared to see if there was anything he could do for Korden, and to delay the meeting.

  Sarana watched him go, and said soberly, ‘It looks as if we have to contemplate a near future with Firgan as the head of the Korden family.’

  Arrant nodded and tried not to think about that. ‘I still haven’t heard your news.’

  ‘Ravage hells, there’s never just one grain of sand under the saddle, is there? That northern vale I went to—Arrant, as far as I could discover, it had been attacked by a single Ravage beast. Yet over a hundred people were killed.’

  He stared at her, appalled. ‘That’s not possible, surely. Not with just one beast.’

  ‘I could not find any other. And this one was different. It used illusion. I killed it, but not before it had taken Temellin’s form.’

  ‘That’s not possible surely!’

  ‘We don’t understand it. I think it must have stolen something from the Mirage Makers—the ability to create an illusion. And it could move. Independently, free of any Ravage sore. I keep imagining thousands of them with those abilities, arriving on the wind, showing us things that aren’t real. Killing for the pleasure of it, and then consuming us. Arrant, I had comforted myself with the thought that we could handle the Ravage beasts if they left the Mirage when the Mirage Makers died. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but Kardiastan would survive. And so would the Magor. But that thing I killed? Even though I knew it couldn’t be Temellin, it looked like him. The Magor can’t see through illusions! We can’t ward against seeing illusions. A few thousand of those could wipe us from the face of the earth. They could obliterate all life in Kardiastan. And you know what that whole incident smacked of to me, as a military planner? A scouting foray. An attempt to see what could be done in a new arena of war. And it was Vortexdamned successful. One creature, more than a hundred dead, and it was still alive fourteen days after it arrived. I suspect the only reason it wasn’t even more successful was because everyone fled the vale.’

  He went cold all over, just thinking of it. Human malice and jealousy and cruelty let loose on the world, with the skills of an illusionist and the appetite of the Ravage. His mouth went dry as he suddenly realised what she had done. ‘Ocrastes’ balls—it looked like Father? And you killed it? How did you know it wasn’t him?’

  She chuckled, but there was little humour there. ‘The illusory Temellin wasn’t blind. And it was too young. The beast obviously hadn’t seen him recently. But you know what the really scary thing was? It knew who I was. It knew the connection between Temel and me. Is Tarran still with you? Can he tell us anything?’

  Flower, Tarran whispered. She went missing about that time…

  The blackness of Tarran’s misery
made it hard for Arrant to think. ‘Shit. Sandhells, Tarran—no Mirage Maker would do what happened there, would they?’

  Of course not. That’s unthinkable. There is no way Flower would help a Ravage beast.

  ‘Could she be forced to?’

  How? Hells, Arrant, there’s nothing you can tell us about suffering that we do not already know. What torture could force her?

  Arrant sucked in a breath and tried not to think about the hell Tarran had lived with every day of his life. ‘All right then, could her powers be stolen from her?’

  Impossible. They are integral to us, just as no one can steal your cabochon and use it.

  ‘What about if she was somehow separated from you? What then?’

  How could she be separated from—But Tarran didn’t finish. Couldn’t finish. He knew the answer, and so did Arrant.

  ‘The wind,’ Arrant explained to Sarana, who had been trying to follow the one-sided conversation. ‘There was a Mirage Maker. She could have been swept away by the wind. Too suddenly and too far away for them to able to sense her in their weakened state. But Tarran doesn’t understand how she could have been, um, subverted.’

  Sarana paled. ‘No! Don’t tell me I killed a Mirage Maker. Please don’t tell me that. Without the illusion, it looked like a Ravage beast!’

  Tarran was silent in Arrant’s mind for a long time before he managed to say in an anguished whisper, We are losing our hold on everything inside the Mirage. The Ravage beasts, the land itself, and now ourselves…Skies, what is to become of you after we are gone?

  ‘The only solution is to stop you dying,’ Arrant replied. ‘Why has only one of you been swept away so far? Maybe they aren’t trying to—’ This time he was the one who stopped, unable to go on. His mind focused down to a pinprick thought, shutting Tarran out, shutting out everything around him—his mother, the room, the morning’s events. He took the thought and fed it, rounded it, moulded it, turned it this way and that to find the holes, the fallacies, the bits that wouldn’t fit.

  Tarran and Sarana waited. Just then Temellin came back into the room and the bell started tolling again.

  ‘Oh, my pickled hells,’ Arrant said softly, addressing them all. ‘We’ve been looking at this the wrong way around. The Ravage doesn’t want to kill the Mirage Makers.’

  Tarran snorted. Well, they’ve been giving a damn good imitation.

  ‘No. What you said once before was true. They can’t do without you. They are part of you—kill you, and they kill themselves. They don’t want to destroy you. They want to become you.’ Terror lapped at him, ripples of it coming from some inner place to break inside his mind and race his heart.

  ‘Mother, you did kill the missing Mirage Maker. I’m sorry, but she was the Ravage beast. The Ravage beast was her. Hells, why did none of us this see this earlier? It’s so obvious! Tarran, they want to make the Mirage Makers so weak you can no longer keep yourselves separate from them. They want to force you to let them back in. They want you to become whole again. Only this time, they—all that is bad about humanity—have multiplied. They will be in command, not the gentle essensa of a Mirage Maker.’ He looked at his parents. ‘The missing Mirage Maker was called Flower. She was old and frail and harmless, a lover of flowers—and look what she became.’

  Poor, poor Flower. I—I was the one who called her that. And I thought of her as female, although she might not have been. When I was little, I gave names to all the ones I could differentiate; it was easier to see them as separate entities that way…He paused. I guess there are times when I am very human, after all. He added, despairing, Do you think she knew what she did?

  He couldn’t lie. He didn’t know how, not to Tarran. ‘How could she not? She was taken over by a Ravage beast which was then able to use her powers of movement—and illusion.’

  ‘Not very well, perhaps,’ Sarana said. ‘But if it’d had time to practice? Oh, Tarran, it chewed a baby out of its mother’s womb. It fed on people. What if—what if they bring you all to the brink of death and then seize your wills, your minds, and ride you on the winds into Kardiastan? Into Madrinya? To feed on us…’ Temellin held out his cabochoned hand to her, and she clasped it in her own.

  Tears trickled down Arrant’s cheeks, but they weren’t his. He allowed them to fall unchecked.

  They were all silent for a long while. Then Tarran started to speak and Arrant softly repeated the words for the benefit of his parents. The way we expected to die was to be consumed by the Ravage. We kept the heart of what we were inviolate. We thought no Mirage Maker could be torn from our unity, from our core. Our Mirage illusions—they are being destroyed, but they are just our—our vestments. Our adornment, our extension of self. They are not our soul, not our essensa. We had held on to that, or we thought we had. But perhaps you are right. That is the part of us they really want. They wish to become us, and change our Mirage to their vision of the world.

  Their vision of the world. A mirage that was not eccentric, but vile. Illusions that were nightmares beyond imagining, where men could run but never escape, where children were eaten and people driven mad with terror.

  ‘Mirageless soul,’ Temellin said, his emotions savage in the air. ‘Think of what it would mean. A Ravage instead of a Mirage. Or many scattered Ravages. And within each, Ravage beasts with Mirage Maker power and the will to use it. Going where they want using the wind, guiding it with Mirage Maker skills. Breaking out from behind the Shiver Barrens to conquer us all. They could do anything. Why stop at Kardiastan?’

  Another silence while they digested that, then Sarana murmured, ‘It was hard for me to kill it even though all my senses told me it wasn’t Temellin. How much harder for common folk to kill something that looks like their wife or child or mother?’

  ‘The permutations are endless,’ Temellin said. ‘What if they use an illusion of, say, a flock of four-winged fisher birds? Or a melon vine? Or a broom? No one is going to expect to be ripped apart by their kitchen broom.’

  Arrant sat unmoving. His nightmares, real. He couldn’t speak. He hadn’t wanted to be right.

  ‘Tarran, how many Mirage Makers are there?’ Temellin asked.

  I don’t know. I’ve never counted them. It would be hard to tell anyway. Many have sort of blurred into one another and are never found apart. In one sense, none of us are ever entirely apart, not even me when I am with you. There are always connections.

  Arrant repeated the words aloud, then asked, ‘Hundreds, then?’

  Skies, no. More than that. Many thousands.

  Arrant blinked and wondered, as he repeated the answer aloud, why that surprised him. He didn’t have to think about why it terrified him.

  The bell continued to ring, calling everyone back for the meeting, but none of them moved.

  ‘I don’t like the Ravage connection to you, Arrant,’ Sarana said. She came forward to lay a hand on his arm in emphasis of her concern. ‘I’ve been thinking about those Ravage dreams of yours. What if they were Ravage sent—deliberately?’

  ‘Why would they want to do that?’ Temellin asked.

  ‘Because there is something about me that scares them,’ Arrant said. ‘They want to frighten me into staying away.’

  Sarana gave him a sharp look and her unease permeated the room. ‘This already occurred to you?’

  He nodded. ‘But I have no idea why I should be a danger to them. None.’

  ‘Because of your fraternal connection to Tarran? The Ravage has known about you ever since you were an essensa. And I can tell you right now, I don’t want you going anywhere near the Mirage.’

  Behind her, his father was nodding in agreement. Arrant felt a sharp disappointment and didn’t bother to hide it.

  ‘Hells,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to get used to feeling your emotions. I don’t know whether to be delighted I can, or to tell you not to be cheeky.’

  He refused to be diverted. ‘If they are frightened of me, then I should go there. Anything that scares them should definite
ly be pursued.’ The fear inside him tightened as he added to Tarran, I hope she’s wrong.

  ‘Not until we work out what it is about you that scares them,’ Sarana said firmly.

  And just how often is your mother wrong? Tarran asked.

  Arrant’s next thought was chilling. Maybe it was better if she wasn’t wrong. If the Ravage feared him, then there was something about him that would spell the end of the Ravage. Maybe he was the only hope for their future. Maybe he would have to become a Mirage Maker to defeat them, forfeiting his physical self. The thought left him hollow with terror, as if he’d been gutted.

  It’s not that bad being a Mirage Maker, Tarran protested, offended.

  Sorry. It’s just, um, oh, never mind. I can’t even begin to explain. ‘So what do we do?’ he asked.

  ‘We will have to prepare for the end of the Mirage, for a start,’ Temellin said.

  ‘Better that we prevent the death of the Mirage Makers in the first place,’ Arrant said, the edge of anger in his voice matched by loosed emotion.

  ‘He is my son too,’ Temellin replied, chiding him gently for the unspoken criticism. ‘I have never forgotten what it means to speak of the death of the Mirage Makers and the vanishing of the Mirage. Never.’ He ran a hand over his head, dislodging the thong that tied back his hair so that an unruly lock flopped over his forehead. ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Tarran. We will go on fighting. All of us, I promise you. We won’t give up, until there’s not one of us alive.’

  The bell stopped tolling and the last reverberation died away into the silence.

  ‘Time for the meeting,’ Temellin said, and rose to his feet.

  Arrant dodged Samia after the Council meeting finished. He felt guilty about it, but just then he couldn’t bear the thought of having to relate the details of that turbulent session. It had been horrible to watch. The shock, the protests, the arguments. The endless circular discussions. The blaming. Firgan using the opportunity to question Temellin’s competence and Sarana’s influence, ranting how his noble father had sacrificed his health attempting to bring a more responsible governance to the Mirager’s rule.