Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  He grinned at her and slapped the shleth on the rump. It took off towards the rake without waiting for her signal and he urged it on with his new-found power.

  ‘You dare—’ she called over her shoulder. But she had stopped hauling on the reins, knowing she was beaten.

  Arrant urged the sorry beast from the wayhouse to follow her. He then turned his attention to Firgan, whose mount propped without warning, then reared. As it pawed the air, it reached back with its feeding arm, grabbed Firgan’s hand and yanked him out of the saddle. He crashed hard to the ground and the shleth gave a satisfied shake of its neck and trotted over to Arrant. He reached up and patted its head, crooning words of delighted praise in its ear before he mounted.

  Once up on its back, he turned to where Firgan was staggering to his feet, his face murderous with the rage that overlaid his bewilderment.

  ‘Get off my shleth!’ Firgan roared.

  Arrant smiled. ‘You can’t be serious, surely.’ Then his smile died as the enormity of what he was about to do seized him. To kill a man was not an occasion to be smiling. ‘Firgan, it ends here. Justice for a man who would murder his brother as part of some larger plan for his power-hungry self, and then his sister because she had the courage to tell her father. You have my knife. I suggest you use it. There at least, I have more compassion than you had for me.’

  ‘You’re going to leave me here?’ The man was incredulous, as if he had trouble believing that this could happen to him. Outraged, he leaped towards Arrant across the frosted earth.

  Arrant danced the shleth away. ‘Yes. Why not? You were doing the same thing to me.’

  Firgan halted. ‘Come now, I was just joking. You didn’t really think I would leave you here, did you? I just wanted to frighten you a bit. To extract your promise to let me be Mirager-heir, that’s all. And I never killed Serenelle. Or Lesgath. I just wanted you to think I had.’

  Arrant gaped at the brazen audacity of the man. ‘Dry hells, Firgan, just how stupid do you think I am?’ He edged the shleth away again as Firgan crept a little closer. ‘I’m not a sadistic man, and I wouldn’t leave you here if I thought there was any other way to do this. It’s a cruel, miserable death. But if I try to help you, you’ll kill me. And Samia too. And Kardiastan will suffer.’

  ‘Let’s fight it out like men. The two of us, two daggers seeing how you can’t use your sword against me—and the winner kills the other and takes the shleth. A quick death.’

  Arrant shook his head. ‘You are certain you’d win, aren’t you? And it’s true I don’t have battle experience. But I was well trained, and I’m the not the puny youth I used to be, either. I could give you a fight. But too much hangs on my winning. I have to put Kardiastan and the Mirage Makers first. Sorry, Firgan.’

  He turned the shleth and started towards the rake at a trot. He sneaked a look behind, just to make sure that Firgan wasn’t trying to throw a blade at him, but the Magori just stood there, the astonishment of disbelief at his predicament written all over his face. Then he started running after Arrant. Not sprinting, but a fast loping run.

  Arrant could have gone faster, but he didn’t. He paced the shleth so that they kept the same distance ahead of Firgan, just out of range of an effective knife throw. The rake ahead grew larger as the minutes passed and, inexorably, Firgan began to slow. When he was sure the man was not just pretending to tire, Arrant slowed too. He kept a watch on the sky, on the brightness to the east where the sun would soon rise. Even riding a quality shleth, he would be cutting it fine.

  He took no joy from what he was doing, but he did not falter either. He knew exactly what outcome he wanted and nothing was going to change it; not guilt, nor second thoughts, nor misplaced compassion. ‘I matter,’ he thought. ‘Sam matters. Tarran matters. You, Firgan, do not.’

  Within a quarter of the run of an hourglass, Firgan was labouring, his face flushed and sweating, his stride shortened. He shouted after Arrant, begging him to stop. The sun sent its first rays racing across the Barrens. The rake cast shadows that ran for miles and then began to recede as the red ball of dawn slid along the horizon, lifting itself higher each time Arrant looked. The first rents appeared in the frost, little melt lines that ran like cracks in an eggshell, radiating out from where the shleth’s paws broke the crust. The grains began to dance. They wriggled out of the fissures, sluggishly rolling this way and that.

  As the sun rose, the frost succumbed, melting into a dampness that quickly vanished. Beneath the feet of the shleth the sands began to move as they dried, trickling in little runnels like water, or shifting in sheets like parchment in the wind, or rippling like the still water of a pond ruffled by a breeze.

  Firgan staggered after him, still shouting. ‘No, wait, please—’ Arrant halted and waited for him to catch up. As soon as he did, he urged his mount on. Firgan yelled after him. ‘There’s nothing noble about this, Arrant. Fight me like a man!’

  Arrant glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t stop. Firgan ran again. The grains rose around his feet, occasionally as high as his knees. His movements became laboured, as if he ran through water. The shleth slowed too, the sand shifting beneath its feet, and it had to use the balled digits of its feeding arms as an added set of legs. With a body clad in thick wool, however, it wasn’t bothered by the pain of the quickening dance around its legs.

  Firgan, however, fell. And rose again, ran again, only to fall a second time. And a third. And a fourth. And then stayed down, exhausted, kneeling on the ground panting, defeated. This time he lacked the strength to raise his head above the level of the whirling, singing sands. The grains attacked him with savage ferocity. They clawed into his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. They crept under his clothes, entering every crevice. Arrant remembered the horror of it…

  He rode back and dismounted. Walked up to the man, ignoring the grains creeping under his own clothes. Firgan stared at him, his terrified eyes showing a glimmer of hope. The rake was close. So close. Two of them on shlethback might make it. Or—

  Or he could use the chance to kill Arrant. Arrant read his intention in the glint of anticipation in his eyes.

  ‘My knife, Firgan, or I ride away.’

  The man fumbled at his belt and held out the dagger, hilt first. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Anything, anything.’ Blood ran down his face and neck.

  Arrant stepped forward, and Firgan, still kneeling, flipped the knife over to grab the hilt. And lunged upwards. But there was no speed there, not any more. He staggered as he threw himself forward, as he tried to stand. Arrant avoided him easily.

  Firgan collapsed to his knees again. The dagger dropped from his hand. Arrant snatched it up before it hit the ground. Firgan fumbled blindly in his clothing for his own knife, couldn’t find it, and began to cry, sobs of hopeless frustration. The grains battered at his face and ran down his neck under his clothing.

  Arrant, still standing, shuddered, even though his own face and shoulders were above the level the grains had reached. He stepped behind Firgan, and wrenched his chin upwards with one hand. Quickly, cleanly, he slit the man’s throat with a deep, savage cut.

  Warm blood spilled. The last look on Firgan’s face was one of befuddled astonishment.

  ‘Nothing very noble about that, Firgan, I know,’ Arrant told the dying man as he dropped his hold and Firgan fell, his head flopping uselessly on his neck, his laboured breathing dragging his own blood into his lungs. ‘But then, there’s nothing noble about being a fool, either.’

  He remounted and urged the shleth away. ‘Everything you’ve got,’ he whispered in its ear. He didn’t look back, not once. Around them the moving sands glittered in the morning light: purple, with silver flashes as they turned. Cabochon, but it was pretty! Pretty, and so apparently harmless.

  And overlaying it all: the song. When he’d sat and listened to it with Samia at his side, he’d thought it beautiful, that wordless melody of the Shiver Barrens. Now it was a dirge, sung for Firgan, but also in anticipation of
his own death if he didn’t reach the rake in time.

  Thoughts jumbled in his mind. ‘Mirage help me. Keep Tarran alive. Let Samia live. Let Sarana and Garis still be alive and unhurt. Show me some way that I can stop what is happening there, to the Mirage Makers. Show me why the Ravage fears me.’

  He kept his eyes on the rake ahead and refused to think of the man he’d left behind, soaking the sand with his blood; refused to think of a body excoriated with the flesh shredded from it and spun out into the dance.

  He could no longer see Samia. He hoped that was because she was already there on the rake, safe. How much further? A tenth of an hourglass? Less? The shleth floundered as the grains reached its underbelly. Arrant hitched his feet up higher, touched his necklet and spoke to the beast, projecting his admiration, his encouragement.

  The smell of blood on his clothes was overpowering. It reminded him of other times he didn’t want to remember. Of Sarana hugging Brand to her breast as he died, of a sword in his hand stained red with Favonius’s blood, of flesh raining from the sky the day he’d thought he’d slaughtered the whole world. And of Firgan, dead by now, behind him.

  Too many deaths.

  The song of the Shiver Barrens thrummed on.

  Why wouldn’t Magor powers work in the Shiver Barrens? The Mirage Makers never had any difficulty with their powers here: they could stop the sand from hurting the Magoroth, they wound their song into the dance, they called up their visions and their mirages, they brought forth the Magoroth swords. Yet the Magor couldn’t raise a wrinkle of power out of a cabochon. Why not? Then there was Quyriot magic. It was even stronger inside the Barrens than it had ever been elsewhere.

  Tarran, if you hear me, come. You could save me with your Mirage Maker’s power. I’m not sure I know how to save myself.

  The irony dredged up a laugh from deep within him. He’d come to save Tarran, and here he was calling on his brother to rescue him. His head ached, his eyes were gritty and sore, his throat dry and painful, his bruises throbbed. Muscles screamed out their pain.

  He was probably as much use to Tarran as a hole in the bottom of a boat, but he reached the rake alive just before the surface of the Shiver Barrens leaped into its full frenzied dance.

  Samia flung herself at him the moment he dismounted, almost knocking him over. ‘You, you, block-headed bollard of a man! Don’t you ever, ever, do that to me again. Just an instant—an instant! That’s all you had left. Oh, sands, Arrant, I thought I had lost you and I’ve never told you all the things I wanted to say…’

  He smiled, enjoying the feel of her arms tight around him. ‘Um, like the fact that I’m a block-headed—what was it you called me? Bollard?’

  ‘I love you, you horrible man. Don’t you ever do that to me again.’

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘I love you. And you’re horrible.’

  ‘I love you, too. And you are quite, quite wonderful. You saved my life back there. Gods, Sam, stealing his shleth!’ He bowed his head close to hers and closed his eyes. He wanted to promise her the world, and he couldn’t even promise himself another sunset.

  Behind them the wayhouse shleth dragged itself out of the Shiver Barrens and onto the rake. Its thick wool had saved it from the worst the sands could do, but it looked a picture of misery anyway. Its nose was bleeding and it gave a series of non-stop sneezes as it tried to clear its nasal passages.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ Samia said, and rushed to show it a pool of water in the rocks, and to feed it grain from Firgan’s saddlebags.

  Arrant’s amusement faded as he turned at last to look down on what had once been the Mirage, spread out before him at a lower level on the other side of the rake. His first glimpse of what his brother had become.

  He was appalled. He tried to feel glad that the Mirage Makers still lived, that indeed Tarran must be alive, but there was no joy in the scene below him. He sank to his knees, hand over his mouth and nose to block the smell. But nothing, nothing could shut out the stink of evil or the reek of rampant malfeasance gleefully running wild. Nothing anyone had said had prepared him for this. His own nightmares had not prepared him for this.

  Oh, Tarran, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

  There was a sea of murky greenish brown stretching to the far horizon. A grey scum oozed greasily across its surface; the liquid beneath was thick and foetid and corrosive. And warm. A shimmer of heat had already formed across the sludge to shiver the air above it. Occasional green bubbles rose to the surface to sit, glistening in foul humps, before they burst. Every now and then something living heaved itself up out of the depths to break through the scum and he had a glimpse of the creatures he’d fought in his nightmares.

  He had thought he’d known them. He was wrong.

  To see the reality of them had him gagging on bile—sweet cabochon, was this really what Tarran had lived with all these years? This disease eating away at his body? His cheerful, bantering brother had suffered the cruelty of these malicious scaled monsters with their baneful gleaming eyes?

  He felt them reach out with their hatred, their loathing. They wanted him dead in the worst possible way; they wanted to tear into him with their serrated teeth and sharpened claws; they wanted to consume him alive and listen to his screams. They wanted him to die knowing he was defeated and the world was devoid of hope.

  In this midden, Rathrox Ligatan and Firgan Korden would have been banned as saints.

  And yet, in the midst of all this, there was beauty and an element of purity; not goodness exactly, but a droll mixture of good sense and zany humour: the Mirage. The Mirage Makers’ creation, their physical manifestation. It survived as a series of islands thrust up out of that foul sea, pathetic patches of courage and colour linked by strands of coloured ribbon held up above the muck by what appeared to be flying fish skeletons with furry wings. The islands had covered themselves in flowers. They were dying in agony, being submerged in a sea of pain, and they covered themselves with an absurd blanket of singing blossoms made of living butterflies and bright petals.

  Arrant knelt there, agonised.

  Tarran, brother, I see you—

  There was a pause before Tarran came, as if he couldn’t believe he’d heard the call, as if he’d had to gather strength out of nowhere to answer it. He hauled himself into Arrant’s head, his weakness smudging the sharpness of Arrant’s mind. And the edge of hope in his words cut Arrant to the core. You have found out why the Ravage fears you?

  ‘No. I just had to come.’

  Oh, Vortex, you fool. You curl-feathered fool. And Samia too? Are you moondaft?

  ‘How could I do otherwise? You always came when I needed you.’

  I don’t need you, Arrant.

  ‘No? Then how come you’re crying?’

  They’re your confounded eyes, you shleth-head. But they were his tears as much as they were Arrant’s, and they both knew it. Arrant, we are still trying to find a way to die without giving the Ravage a chance to seize us. That way you’ll all be safe at least.

  ‘Father wants to know two things: if we can interpose our forces, a whole army of Magor and non-Magor, between you and the Ravage would that give you a chance to—well, to escape or die. And if that is possible, then he wants to know how long you would need. How long we’d have to hold them off. He is bringing every Magor in the country here, as well as ordinary soldiers.’

  I don’t think that’s possible, I really don’t. You wouldn’t survive long enough.

  ‘Oh, Tarran, if we don’t try, we are going to die anyway. Killed by the Ravage using the Mirage Makers’ illusions and mobility. And not just us, but the whole of Kardiastan. And who knows where after that? If we Magor can stop the Ravage by dying here, then we must do so. We all know that.’

  Wait.

  The silence that followed carried no possibility of a joyous outcome. Tarran was discussing the proposal with the other Mirage Makers, and whatever they decided, whatever they thought was possible, it would end in trage
dy.

  Behind him, while he waited, he heard Samia moving around attending to the shleths. She must have been seething with questions, but she didn’t disturb him. This was his time; his and Tarran’s.

  When Tarran spoke again, he seemed subdued. The words he spoke did not sound like his. They reached into something much more ancient, into the other part of his greater whole.

  The Mirager’s plan would not meet with success. However, there is another possibility. We Mirage Makers could all congregate in one place, and the Magor could build a ward around us, the tightest, strongest ward that has ever been built. It has to last three days.

  Arrant blanched. ‘Three days?’ The difficulty of building a ward as strong and as large as that was daunting. But to maintain it for three whole days?

  ‘You think the Ravage will die if it is cut off from you for that long?’

  No. The Ravage could go on living in their sores for months, years perhaps. And they could leave on the wind, to torment your people. The ward is to kill us. To block everything that is life-giving from us. The sun, warmth, water, light. We must be enclosed in darkness and cold. Such a ward can only be built and maintained if the Magor give all that they have, in unity of purpose.

  The Ravage will try to stop you. Many of you will die, perhaps all. Perhaps you will not succeed. Some beasts will choose to leave on the winds before the warding is complete and they will feed where they can. And you should be warned—more of us have been torn from our entity. Nineteen so far. Soon, there will be more Ravage beasts with Mirage Maker powers among you. You will have to fight them.

  If you are successful, there will a future. We salute you all for your intended sacrifice, you, who will be the last of the Magor.

  Through a blur of tears, Arrant saw part of one of the islands crumble. It slid into the sea and disappeared; its agony hit Arrant like the backwash of a boat, wave after wave of it, channelled through Tarran. He began to shake, but he said aloud, calling out to his brother, ‘No, not yet. I haven’t finished. I refuse to give up. Tarran, we’ve got to think of something. There has to be a better way. There has to! And anyway, I’m not going to let my brother die: if there’s no way out, none at all, then you must come to me. Permanently.’