Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  ‘That’s right,’ Garis said. ‘There has been another development since you left.’ He raised his voice to make it obvious he was including all the other Magor in the conversation. ‘Listen, everyone. The Mirager-heir, Miragerin-sarana, has something to say to you all.’

  The thought of the hot bath she had just ordered from the wayhousekeeper beckoned, but Sarana pushed away the temptation. ‘Goddess, but this is depressingly familiar,’ she thought. ‘And I was foolish enough to think I had left pre-battle orations behind me?’ Aloud, she said, ‘I’m afraid I have bad news. Those of you who thought you were on your way back to Madrinya will have to turn around. The final battle for the Mirage Makers is about to begin.’ She held up a hand to stop the murmurs of protest. ‘This is not something that any of us have a choice about.’ She fixed her gaze on Firgan. ‘It seems that the Ravage intends to take over the Mirage Makers, not kill them—’

  Firgan tried to corner her alone afterwards, but Sarana refused to cooperate. She brushed by him, urging Arrant along with her. ‘Lesson,’ she said in her son’s ear as they walked away, ‘when a man like that wants to talk to you alone, it’s because he thinks he has a way of unsettling you. Don’t give him the opportunity. We don’t need to hear his poison.’

  ‘Can’t we do something? I’d like to murder him on his pallet.’

  ‘So would I, but let him go fight the Ravage instead. He’s needed there.’

  ‘Do we have to ride the rest of the way with him?’

  ‘In the morning I’m going to order him, in front of the other soldiers, to leave first with the men. I’m the Mirager-heir; he will have to do as I say,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Rank has its advantages sometimes. Now go and join Samia over in the corner there—you need as much time as possible with her.’

  He had no idea how much it hurt her to say that; she coveted his time too, but knew it was no longer hers to command. She went to eat with the Magor, and her dread as she thought of the days to come was as cold as hoarfrost on winter-bare trees.

  Firgan and the other Magor rode out before daybreak, but not before Firgan had managed to corner Arrant in the latrines. There were plenty of other people around coming and going, so Arrant wasn’t worried about his safety, but given what Sarana had said to him the previous evening, he regretted his inability to escape the confrontation.

  ‘I have something to show you,’ Firgan said. He put his hand into his belt pouch and extracted a marble vial. He removed the stopper and poured a handful of what looked like sand into his palm. Arrant stared at it, mesmerised. Casually Firgan tipped his hand over the latrine hole, and the grains tumbled down in a stream of gold. They sparkled in the light of the oil lamps as if they had a life of their own, twisting and glittering on their way to oblivion in the wayhouse’s drainage system. A few grains hit the polished marble of the latrine seat with a sharp sound.

  Not sand then. More like stone grit. Arrant looked at it blankly. ‘Very pretty,’ he said tonelessly. ‘What game are we playing now, Firgan?’

  Firgan bent to whisper in his ear. ‘The last of Serenelle,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Watch that lovely lady of yours. The next time the powdered gem could be red. For no better reason than that it would hurt you.’

  He turned on his heel and left, leaving the vial behind.

  Arrant, shocked almost beyond thought, steadied himself against the wall. He stared at the few grains still on the latrine seat. They winked at him; gold fire clung to their shattered facets as if clinging to the last moments of life.

  Serenelle?

  He dampened a fingertip and picked up the grains, then rolled them down to nestle against the glow of his cabochon. And felt her, the remnant of her, pulse through his body.

  He stared, hating, in the direction Firgan had taken. The man had carried around the remains of his sister’s cabochon just to mock him. ‘Oh, Serenelle, I’m so sorry.’

  Carefully he placed the grains back in the vial and put it in his belt pouch. ‘One day soon, Firgan. I swear it.’

  Pale-faced, he joined the others in the stables. Firgan and the Magor warriors had already left. The keeper of the wayhouse came to talk to them as they readied their mounts. A worried frown furrowed a face that age had already creased as generously as folds had pleated the rakes. ‘Miragerin,’ he said, addressing Sarana, ‘you heading for the Shiver Barrens or down the paveway to Asufa?’

  Arrant looked up, not liking the fearful note in the man’s tone. ‘Ravage hells, what now?’ he muttered.

  Sarana slung her saddlebags across the shleth the stableboy was holding for her. ‘We go to the Mirage,’ she said.

  ‘I’d postpone the journey, if I were you.’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘Why?’

  ‘Look. That’s between you and the First Rake.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the stable gateway.

  They all turned to stare through the entrance in the wayhouse wall. The day was already hot, with a dry, ovenlike heat that held no moisture. The sun had just risen, but the sky ahead was an eerie brown, moving like the waves of an ocean made restless by unseen currents.

  ‘Clouds?’ Samia asked, awed. ‘In Kardiastan?’

  Arrant swore. Clouds? They weren’t clouds. Turbulent smoke from Ocrastes’ war-forge, an eruption from the bowels of the ground, perhaps, but nothing as tame as storm clouds. It was the Ravage on the move. This was part of the land that the Mirage Makers had kept bound with their magic, this was the foundation on which they had built their crazy, wonderful, humour-filled world…and it was blowing away in the wind.

  The wayhousekeeper said, ‘It’s something that’s been happening more often over the past half month: winds, great winds filled with dust, coming out of the Mirage. No, more than just wind. Storms. They form in the Mirage every so often, during the night, and start to move with the dawn—a great wave that bears down on us full of driving, choking dust. The Magor warriors here last night? They called them ravage-gales.’

  ‘Have you seen anything—anything unusual within the cloud of sand?’ Garis asked.

  The wayhousekeeper waved towards the cloud in the sky. ‘Isn’t that unusual enough for you? Don’t ride out in this. You may not reach the rakes. This one looks worse than usual. It may last for hours.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Arrant said. His voice sounded harsh and cold to his ears. ‘There’s no choice, not for me.’ Perhaps the storm was another attempt to keep him away. He took the shleth reins out of the stableboy’s hands and prepared to mount.

  Garis shrugged. ‘Applies to the rest of us, too,’ he said.

  The wayhousekeeper nodded. ‘What is happening out there is Magor business at that, and only the Magor can stop it. But you will need something more than what you have. Wait.’ He turned to the stableboys. ‘Belcallin—you go get all the straining cloths we have from the kitchens. And you, Marcar, get four empty nosebags.’ As they ran to obey he turned back to say, ‘The nosebags will give the mounts a chance to breathe if you run into the dust. I don’t want them choking to death. And the linen you can use for yourselves. Stretch it over your nose and mouth.’

  ‘Did Magori-firgan know this dust cloud was out there when the others started off this morning?’ Sarana asked.

  He shook his head. ‘They left while it was still dark. Perhaps they’ll turn around now that they see it.’

  Perhaps. But Arrant didn’t think so. Hells, the man had killed Serenelle and cut out her cabochon. His own sister. The shock of it was still raw, his rage still bitter, his regret still heavy.

  For the first three hours along the road, the air hung still and thick and the land was hushed, as if every living thing was quiet with dread. Nothing sang or chirped or moved; the shleths and their four riders might have been the only living things left in the world. Then the wind began, unnaturally hot. Skin dried out like parchment left in the sun. The shleths tossed their heads and grizzled in the back of their throats, unhappy noises of animals made fearful because something was wrong with the
world.

  Ahead, billows of liver-brown loomed, tumefying in slow motion, an amorphous being swallowing the sky. Arrant kept a tight rein on his emotions. This was no natural windstorm, blowing just because the Mirage Makers had lost their hold on the land beyond the Shiver Barrens. This was Ravage-caused. He shivered. This was the advance guard, seeking them out. Seeking him.

  And one day soon, even if the Mirage Makers starved themselves into oblivion, the creatures of the Ravage would ride that wind into Kardiastan. All of them, trying to live on Kardis the way they had lived on the Mirage. And if the Mirage Makers didn’t manage to commit suicide, then it would be Tarran and his kind who looked out of those Ravage eyes with rapacious hunger.

  The wind blasted into his face as he marshalled enough courage just to ride on. ‘I am going to die out there,’ he thought, saddened. ‘I am leading Samia to her death.’

  He thought those things, and yet still rode on. The weight on his shoulders was almost more than he could bear, but he made sure none of the others saw how it burdened him. And through it all, he remembered Firgan and the stream of golden dust trickling through his fingers.

  Of that, he told no one. It was between him and Firgan. And Firgan was somewhere up ahead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The road they now used headed northwest, a single file path heading up into the outer line of stony hills that paralleled the rakes. Time and countless feet had sliced the zigzag track deep into the steep slope. Once they began the climb, much of the brown cloud was blocked from view by the hill itself; Samia could even pretend for a while that there was nothing unusual in the sky, nothing sweeping down on them from the Mirage.

  Until she caught an unpleasant whiff of rot. She looked over her shoulder at Arrant. He smiled encouragement, but she sensed the lie residing in the optimism of the curve of his lips. ‘He must surely be just as frightened as I am,’ she thought, ‘even though I can never sense his fear. How does he hide it so well?’

  Past him she glimpsed Sarana and Garis. They had fallen behind, and were about to turn the sharp bend of the zigzag below. Sarana’s mount had proved to have a hatred of steep slopes and had slowed to a dismal crawl. Earlier, Garis had been cracking jokes about ageing arthritic joints and matching mounts to riders, and Sarana had used some choice words to describe what she would do to the wayhousekeeper next time she saw him. Now they worried the slowness of the beast would kill them.

  Samia turned to face forward again, and her shleth plodded stoically on. Her thoughts returned to Arrant. ‘I do love him, although sometimes I’m not sure why. He’s not amazingly handsome like Grevilyon Jahan. He’s not dark and dangerous and intriguing like I used to think Firgan was. He’s not witty, like Bevran, or endearing like poor tangle-footed Perry.’

  He was just quietly brave. ‘I think that must be it,’ she pondered. ‘Inconspicuous courage, the kind of bravery that is breathtaking because he always knows what the cost is. Even when he left for Tyrans, it wasn’t in defeat. It was with a plan to return and make Kardiastan a better place.’ She glanced back again. He was dropping behind, wanting perhaps to talk to Garis and Sarana. He waved her on.

  She remembered the litheness of his body, the muscular strength of his arms and thighs, the charm of his smile that always seemed to catch her unawares with its suddenness—and she grinned at her self-deception. ‘Stop fooling yourself, Sam. He may not be as handsome as Grevilyon, but you find him irresistible anyway.’

  By the time she reached the underlip of the crest, she was dwelling pleasurably on her memories of the night before—until the quiet of the steep-sided valley was overwhelmed by a rushing roar of wind. She looked up. The brown cloud glowered down on her from the sky like a living thing. A gale swept before it, barrelling straight at her, gathering dust, ripping bushes out of the ground and bowling pebbles like tors in a game of hopsquares.

  The skin of her body tautened in terror. She had a flicker of time in which to react, to work out a way to save herself from the onslaught. Paralysing terror snatched that splinter of possibility from her.

  But not from the shleth. It reared. The digits of a feeding arm clawed around her lower leg. A savage yank tore her from the saddle. She sailed through the air, one hand still desperately clutching the reins. She slammed into the ground. In its eagerness to escape, the shleth planted a paw on her stomach. She yelped and let go of the reins. The animal took off faster than she would have thought any shleth, let alone a wayhouse beast, could move.

  And she was flat on her back in the middle of a sandstorm bad enough to make a Magor-made tempest seem like ripples on bathwater. She wanted to scream for Arrant, but had no breath to spare.

  The ground was shaking. She raised her head—and knew she was dead. The top of the hillside shuddered. A rockslide beginning. A slip of dust here, a few stones there. A deep rumble in the heart of the earth, matching the wrench of the ripped land above. And she was in its path. Her fingers dug into soil as she scrabbled for purchase to lever herself up. Boulders shifted above her head. Bile—fear?—moved to her throat, burning. She struggled to overcome the jolting of her fall. To command her jangled body. Just to stand…

  A twist of wind whirled along the ridge. At its centre, unmoving in the midst of movement, a scaled, many-limbed body. Its shining eyes locked on hers. It drooled, then its gaze slid over her, to rove on in search of other prey.

  She thrust out her hand to build a ward. Knowing she was too late. The creature’s eyes lit up with glee, but it wasn’t looking at her. Not her; Arrant. The first of the boulders heading her way exploded in a shower of light. Golden light. The shards sprinkled her, stinging. Arrant’s power? Or perhaps her father’s. Or Sarana’s. More boulders on the way, though. She’d be flattened…

  At last her legs answered her. She scrambled upright and terror took command of her body. She darted away through the swirls of sand and grit, leaping after her shleth.

  A voice roared at her from behind. ‘Mount up!’

  Creeping cats, dubblup. On a wayhouse sluggard? The man was mad! She didn’t turn to look, but tensed as she raced headlong.

  A shower of dust and rock hit her legs. Somehow she managed to keep her feet amid rolling pebbles. She heard another boulder explode and saw the flash of gold that had caused it.

  The head of Arrant’s shleth drew level on her left side and then eased in front. But the beast wasn’t cooperating. It should have had its feeding arm down, ready for her to plant her right foot on its palm between the clutching digits. Instead, its arm was firmly slotted into the groove on its neck. She raced on, arms pumping, legs leaping anything in her way.

  ‘Blast,’ she thought, ‘how long can I keep this pace up?’

  Arrant, white-faced, leaned forward over the shleth’s neck and jabbed at its arm with his shleth prod. Reluctantly, the beast brought its palm into position. ‘Now!’ Arrant screamed at her, and reached down with his right arm.

  Lessons learned from a dozen falls and countless bruises. Hand, foot, hand. Timing was everything. She grabbed his hand with hers, took one skip then—hauled up by Arrant—hoisted her right foot onto the waiting shleth feeding arm. She snatched at the back of his saddle with her left hand and was half-vaulted by the shleth, half-pulled by Arrant up into the saddle behind him, all without the shleth missing a pawbeat. She’d done it often enough in foolish play, but this was the first time in earnest, with a wind beating at them all, with dust in her eyes and dirt choking her throat. And on a mount that neither of them knew. How the sandhells had he done that? Persuaded a strange beast to do all the right things at the right time? Did he talk the language of his mounts?

  His necklet, of course, she realised.

  She put one arm around his waist and buried her head into his back to escape the dirt-laden wind. She fumbled in her belt pouch and extracted the piece of linen the wayhousekeeper had given her. She tied it over his nose and mouth. Only then did she risk a look behind.

  And saw the whole hillside o
n the move, tumbling, roaring, gushing into the valley. Rocks, boulders, scrubby trees, earth—all pouring like water. Somewhere beyond were Garis and Sarana. Rasping gasps spasmed her throat. Terror or dust; she could no longer tell. She was unable to see if Garis and Sarana had survived, unable to see them at all.

  The shleth galloped on through a shower of earth. Arrant turned his head to look up at the cloud. A gold beam pierced the murk, coming somewhere from behind. The twist of it hit something and exploded. Flesh and blood and bones and green muck swirled out in all directions. Arrant ducked as something hit his face. Blood showered them both.

  More soil and rocks thundered down, but the shleth had carried them beyond their path. Samia watched over her shoulder while the cascade of earth and stone engulfed torn limbs and unidentifiable pieces of something alien that had once been living, and buried them mercifully deep. The noise changed from thundering earth on the move to the whine of the wind and an occasional soft slither of unstable ground. And then a howl reverberated around the valley.

  Shivers cascaded down her spine. ‘What was that?’ Her voice shook. She was caught up in terror and didn’t know how to escape.

  ‘Ravage beasts. There’s more of them inside the ravage-gale,’ he shouted. ‘We have to keep going.’

  She knew what he was saying. They couldn’t do anything. They were cut off from Sarana and Garis by the landslide, an enormous slip of earth and rock that looked as if it would continue on its way down to the bottom of the valley if anyone so much as sneezed. Sarana and Garis, if they were even alive, would not be following on their heels.

  ‘One of them sent that final blast of Magor power,’ Arrant said, as if he’d read her thoughts.

  She took a deep breath and began to calm down.

  He added, ‘We’ll go on and try to pick up the road ahead somewhere.’