Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  The only admirable thing had been Temellin’s demeanour throughout. He’d calmed, cajoled and reassured long past the moment when a lesser man would have lost his temper. If he’d felt despair, he had not shown it. For Arrant, watching his father being buffeted by the emotions of the assembly had been hard. And so, afterwards, when he’d seen Samia demanding to know what had happened from Perradin, he had taken the opportunity to sneak past her. He wanted to talk to Tarran, trying not to think how every moment they had was precious, and how few moments could be left to them. That Tarran would soon be gone from the world seemed impossible. That acerbic, witty brother of his? His sharp inquiring mind erased, never to make Arrant laugh again? Let’s get across to the Mirager’s garden, he said. We can be quiet there.

  Tarran was silent as Arrant walked, but the moment they had entered the quiet confines of the garden he said, Arrant, I’m going back.

  ‘Now?’

  Yes. Um, say goodbye to Papa.

  ‘Acheron’s mists! You don’t intend to come back?’

  No. I don’t know. Probably not. I’m sorry, Arrant. I don’t like leaving you powerless, but that will happen anyway, and soon. We—the Mirage Makers—have got to think of a way to kill ourselves. And quickly. Before the Ravage makes us too weak to resist it. It’s not going to be easy. The only way we have to die is to starve ourselves of energy—and that would make us weak and vulnerable and they would take us over anyway. I don’t know what we are going to do.

  ‘Wait, Tarran—’

  I’ve got to get back there. He gave a dry laugh. I don’t need to be strong any more. I have to die, and to do that I have to be weak. Silly, huh? I’ve been doing the wrong thing all along. His grief trailed through Arrant’s mind. His fear of dying underlaid every word he uttered, the poignancy only emphasised by his attempts to suppress it.

  ‘Don’t you dare go before I tell you what I have to,’ Arrant said fiercely. ‘Listen, if the Ravage has been sending me dreams all my life to scare me away, then it’s because I have the power to defeat them, and they know it.’

  Brother, that is all conjecture. Very likely they just took a dislike to your sense of humour. And for sure they don’t like your parentage. Arrant, it takes energy to listen for you—don’t expect me to hear.

  ‘I’m sure I’m right!’

  Tarran’s next words were gently said. If you ever find out what it is they fear, come to us. Stand on the Fifth Rake and call my name. Part of us will hear and if I still live, I will come. Full life, brother. I will never forget you.

  Arrant’s thoughts went blank. This was too sudden, too abrupt, too shocking. He wanted to say so much, but nothing would come to him.

  I know it all, Tarran said. I have felt it. You don’t have to say it. We have loved, you and I.

  And he was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘He’s gone?’

  Samia stared at him in consternation. She had come to him that morning not knowing that Tarran had vanished from his mind the day before. He nodded in reply and sketched in all that she did not know, finishing with, ‘I’ve tried calling to him, but he won’t answer. Which is a nuisance because Father wants to know whether it’s possible to interpose an army between the Mirage Makers and the Ravage beasts, to physically separate them to give the Mirage Makers time enough to die. And if that’s possible, he wants to know how long they’d need, um, before they’d die.’

  ‘But—but wouldn’t that mean the death of our army?’

  He nodded again. ‘Yes, probably. It’s either that, or every living Kardi. Imagine it, Sam. Illusions that are real. Not the harmless craziness that you were used to when you lived in the Mirage. These new illusions will be a darkness, a Mirage in which—no matter where we look—we will face things beyond the horror of our imaginations.’ The creatures of his dreams. ‘And they will be real.’

  She looked sick and he knew she was thinking of her father. ‘Mirage help us, we have to work out why the Ravage fears you.’

  ‘I know.’ But his thought, which he kept to himself, was bleak: ‘Something tells me I may have to die to make this right.’

  ‘Your connection to Tarran has got to be at the top of the list. Together the two of you are certainly stronger than anyone I know.’

  ‘Yet hardly powerful enough to kill a whole sea of Ravage beasts.’ He touched the Quyr necklet. ‘I also have this. It gives me a connection to my mounts. Especially to shleths. And it worked well when we were under the Shiver Barrens. In the end, it was what saved my father and me because I could sense where the shleths were.’

  ‘Is that how you did that?’ she asked, interested. ‘I’m not sure if that is relevant, though. Nor am I certain we should assume just because you have dreams about the Ravage that they sent them. Or, if they did, that they sent them for a reason. It may have just been sheer malice.’

  ‘Either way my parents won’t let me go to the Mirage yet, especially now that Tarran’s not around and my power is as unpredictable as ever.’ He looked at his nearly colourless cabochon. ‘They keep on saying: later, later. It’s driving me sand crazy.’

  ‘They think the Ravage will target you.’

  ‘Yes. Father sent Firgan back last night, did you know that? He was furious, but he went. Oh, and I was right about Serenelle. She did tell him about me having cabochon power again, and my parents wanting me to be Sarana’s heir. But only because he coerced her. So in a way, you were right too.’

  ‘Oh! Well, I suppose you made that redundant anyway, when you powered up your sword yesterday to get into the Council Hall.’

  ‘Don’t remind me. Gods, Father ripped strips off me over that last night. How on earth does he make me feel thirteen again so easily? It’s ridiculous. But what’s worrying me is that I can’t find Serenelle. I told her to go to the Mirager’s Pavilion, but she didn’t arrive.’

  ‘But you said Firgan has left for the Mirage?’

  ‘Serenelle was already missing by the time he left.’

  She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to; her anxiety was there in the line of her brow and the hunch of her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, sands take it, Samia. I feel so—so frustrated.’

  She came to stand close to him, and took his hand. ‘I know. I feel I want to stop the water clocks and halt the hourglasses and keep everything the way it is,’ she whispered. ‘Because what comes next is going to be too catastrophic.’

  ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘I may not have seen the Mirage, but I do know the Ravage. It’s one thing to try to kill the beasts one at a time. But to attempt to drive a force between each Ravage sore and each unsullied piece of the Mirage? The beasts will unify to shred us all.’

  They stared at each other, momentarily immobilised and silenced by the proximity of disaster, by the intimate approach of death; for their parents, their friends, and ultimately themselves.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking of Tarran,’ he said. ‘He has to die, or he will come on the wind to kill us. Do you think he’d know what he did? I do. I think his mind would still be alive there, somewhere inside a Ravage beast, as he tore us to pieces.’

  She faltered. ‘If they are just human failings, why are they so very bad?’

  ‘They are human failings that have been allowed to grow and fester in Ravage sores for hundreds of years, separated from the, um, the moderation of human virtues. The Mirage Makers didn’t try to change them, or soften them; they just tried to keep them encapsulated. We are all going to pay for their mistake, Samia.’

  In answer, she reached across and held his hand. ‘Whatever we do, Arrant, promise me we’ll do it together.’

  He stared at her, nonplussed.

  Her plea took on urgency. ‘I’m a healer; I don’t fight. And without Tarran, you won’t have much control over your power. To keep what you do have, you will need me to heal your cabochon from time to time. My father, your parents—they are warriors. They won’t have time for us. And I don’t want to die alone. I don’t want to be alone,
without a friend who cares. Promise, Arrant—no matter what happens, we’ll be together.’

  Her bottom lip trembled, and he could no more have refused her anything than he could have stopped time by refusing to invert an hourglass. ‘I don’t want to be alone either,’ he said simply. He hesitated, desperately wanting to take her into his arms and kiss her, but he delayed too long and the moment passed.

  ‘You’re thinking of going to the Mirage, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Tonight. Without telling anyone.’

  He nodded. ‘Am I so obvious?’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  When he hesitated again, she cocked her head, her whole stance daring him to patronise her by refusing.

  ‘You wretch, Sam!’ he said. ‘I am blessed if I understand how you can say so much by not saying a word.’

  ‘And you don’t even need a cabochon to know. What time do we leave?’

  Garis had once told Arrant that the stones of the Ordensa paveway had been cemented with blood. He’d meant it figuratively, referring to the hundreds of slaves who had died in the rush to have the road completed as quickly as possible and the numerous Tyranians—overseers, engineers and legionnaires alike—who had fallen to Magor attack as they built their wayhouses and forced the paving across the drylands from vale to vale.

  The first time he had ridden it, Arrant had been moved by the thought of what this road had cost in human life; now, as they left the city behind long before sunrise, there was so much more to concern him. His fear for his brother yawed in his stomach, and the idea that everything depended on him, on some unknown factor that made the Ravage fear him, was there to sicken him as well. He had felt the claws of hate digging into his dreaming soul. And now his responsibility for Samia’s safety touched everything he did. But he had promised her…and he needed her.

  Gods, Garis was going to be furious when he found out.

  He fingered his necklet, trying to take comfort from the warmth of the runes. Darkness lightened into pale sky and silhouette; the eroded remains of Tyranian grave stele materialised out of the blackness of the night, thrusting up from the sand to line the way like sentinels for the buried dead the invaders had left behind. He glanced across at Samia, and caught the glimpse of her smile in the first light of dawn.

  How long before his departure came to his father’s ears? He calculated: several hours yet before Eris came to wake him. He’d be surprised that Arrant wasn’t there, but not alarmed. He would just assume he had gone to his father to work on the problems besetting them. It could be hours before anyone realised he was missing.

  Samia would be another matter. When they walked the shleths he asked, ‘Did you leave a note for your father?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Just that I was with you and not to worry. Of course he will.’

  ‘I want to ride as continuously as we can.’

  She rubbed her thigh meaningfully. ‘Ouch.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. We’ll change shleths at every wayhouse or livery.’

  ‘Have you enough money? That will cost.’

  ‘I shall bill the Mirager.’

  She laughed. ‘You disobey your father and then get him to pay for it? I like the way your mind works, Arrant Temellin.’

  ‘And I like the way your body moves,’ he said silently, and then cursed to himself. Why did his mind always turn to things like that? He forced himself to think about what they were doing.

  Someone would be sent after them. Garis, probably. Arrant would certainly refuse to return. The Mirage—Tarran—was running out of time.

  Fear, fatigue, jingling harness, the rise and fall of a mount; pursuit behind, the unknown ahead. The glorious freedom of the road narrowed by the confines of the task undertaken; the tension that never relaxed its hold…He knew it all. He’d ridden this path before as a child. Only, this time he was in charge.

  Paveway wayhouses with accommodation were a day’s ride apart, interspersed with livery stables. They made the first wayhouse in time for lunch, thanks to the quality of their shleths. He doubted that they would be able to maintain that speed for the next leg of the journey because the pavilion-pampered beasts were swapped for wayhouse sluggards with mouths as tough as the maw on a clam. Worse, his new mount had the gait of an overweight goose. Samia’s had feeding arms that hung out of the neck grooves and flapped as if the beast had flight in mind.

  ‘I feel ridiculous riding this,’ she muttered, as they rode out of the wayhouse gate.

  ‘I know it looks silly, but the stablehand did say it was a comfortable mount. Come, we have to ride faster, or your father will be breathing down my neck, and I am none too sure how I can look him in the eye and tell him, yes, I do indeed intend to take his daughter into what is probably the most dangerous place in the known world right now.’

  ‘Just tell him I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then he’ll be all sympathetic.’ She smiled at him.

  ‘Gods,’ he thought, ‘I love her.’

  Garis woke that morning, knowing something was wrong.

  The night before, Temellin had suggested that he stay in the Mirager’s Pavilion, but he had refused and made his way back to his sister-in-law’s villa where, he hoped, Samia was long asleep. It was well past midnight when he entered the house, and he would have loved to have peeked into her room and tucked her in, as he had done when she was a child. He passed her door regretting she was too old for that now, and wondered where all the precious years of childhood had gone.

  At least they would have breakfast together, because who knew when they would see each other again? His last thoughts as he went to sleep that night were about how to persuade her to stay in Madrinya even though, as a healer, her talents would be invaluable in the battle with the Ravage. Maybe he didn’t have the right to stop her. Perhaps people would die if she wasn’t there. But, oh, his mirageless soul—what if she were the one to die? How would he ever forgive himself?

  When he woke before dawn, he knew she was gone. Always the first thing he did in the morning was to seek her out with his positioning powers. And she wasn’t there.

  Within a quarter of an hour he was flinging open the doors to Sarana and Temellin’s room in the Mirager’s Pavilion. They were both still asleep in the same bed. Sarana was half sprawled on top of the covers. She wasn’t wearing anything.

  They both woke and moved at the same time—and they both did the same thing. They reached for their swords hanging from the wall above the bed-head, only halting the instinctive move to arm themselves once their senses told them who had intruded.

  Sarana grabbed for a sheet to cover herself instead. ‘Vortexdamn it, Garis—do you make a habit of walking in on me when I’m naked?’

  ‘Twice in twenty years is not a habit,’ he said. ‘And you still look ravishing.’

  ‘He’s done this before?’ Temellin asked her, scowling.

  Garis refused to allow himself to be diverted. ‘Listen, you two, Arrant and Samia are missing.’

  ‘What do you mean, missing?’ Sarana asked, flinging off the covers to get up. ‘Turn your back, you barbarian. Did no one ever teach you to knock?’

  He looked away. ‘She left a note to say they were together, and I suspect they have gone to the Mirage.’

  ‘Blast the lad,’ Temellin muttered. ‘And that girl of yours, too. She ought to have known better. Garis, go after them. You too, Sarana.’

  ‘What about all the arrangements that have to be made?’ Garis asked, turning around to face them again even though Sarana was only half-dressed. He didn’t notice. ‘You gave me enough orders yesterday to keep me occupied for a month. And asked them all to be done today.’ He swallowed, hating himself for saying the words. ‘We are going to a battle that means everything. Our children are—are precious to us, but—’ He halted, unable to betray Samia by saying the obvious. She wasn’t as important as the nation. She was only one person.

  Temellin’s reply was calm and measured
. ‘We need to know, urgently, the answer to those two questions I had for Tarran. Arrant obviously has not been able to contact Tarran from afar, and they have gone to do it from the last rake. It’s now your job to keep him safe. What you do about Samia is your business. Is that clear?’ Temellin asked.

  ‘Er—yes. Of course,’ Garis replied. He suddenly felt he ought to be standing spear-haft straight, saluting like a Tyranian soldier. Damn it, how could the man do that with just a few choice words?

  But Temellin hadn’t finished. ‘And need I remind you that Firgan is out there somewhere? Those two children of ours will be riding as if the winds of the Vortex are on their tails. They’ll catch the bastard up. If you want to put personal considerations aside, Garis, just remind yourself that the nation needs Arrant alive to speak to Tarran and it’s doubtful if Firgan will let a little fact like that bother him.’

  Garis went pale. He had forgotten Firgan. ‘Right,’ he said.

  Sarana, in the meantime, had gone to the door and given orders to one of the servants. Now she was gathering a few things together and stuffing them into a pack. ‘Go down to the kitchens, Garis, and get us both something to eat and drink. I’ll meet you at the stables in a quarter of an hour.’

  He nodded. ‘Full life,’ he said to Temellin, and suddenly the words of farewell seemed poignantly final.

  ‘Indeed, I hope so,’ Temellin replied. ‘Do not fail me, Garis.’ They both knew he was not speaking of the answers he required of Tarran.

  As soon as Garis closed the door behind him, Temellin held out his left hand to Sarana. She placed her cabochon against his. They knew they might never meet again, and this handclasp, this simple giving of love through a touch, might be the last time for them.

  ‘When we met, I thought I had only days to live,’ he said, knowing she would know what he was talking about. ‘I had no choice except death. And then you gave me back my Mirager’s sword. Every moment since then has been a bonus I never thought I would have. I don’t know that we will live through this. I do not expect to. But I do know what I owe you. And I do know that I am the luckiest man who ever lived.’