Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  He struggled up. He seemed to be eyeball to eyeball with the closest Ravage beast. It took a swipe at him with a talon that was a handspan long. He leaned back, mercifully out of range, and groped for his sword. Tarran gasped directions, until Arrant’s hand closed around the hilt and he swept the blade across to remove the claw and an arm or two from the dross-covered body.

  He clambered to his feet.

  He had his back to the channel of flowing sands. In front of him, a semi-circle of furious brutish faces, their hungry eyes relishing his flesh, a hideous carpet of living obscenities: hundreds of them. There was no way he could destroy them all.

  He accepted then that he was going to die.

  Half-heartedly he lopped off the nearest groping limbs and spared a glance towards the islands of the Mirage. The sands of the Shiver Barrens were still pouring through the channel he’d cut, sweeping the grains that had preceded them further out into the Ravage sea to envelop and conquer it in a tide of colour. Dead bodies of Ravage beasts floated here and there, gradually being shredded by the dancing sands. But as more sands barrelled in from behind they created waves, and the waves passed into the Ravage liquid, washing it ahead.

  He watched, appalled, as wave after wave of poison slapped against the islands of the Mirage. The ribbons and the flowers had all gone. The islands were unadorned now. Humps, protruding above a poisonous sea. Around the edges, they crumbled and slipped and were swallowed up, diminished like children’s sandcastles being swamped by an incoming tide.

  Ironical, eh? Tarran said, and the ache in his words spoke of a lifetime not fully realised, of the time he might have had. It’s mostly just Mirage that’s dying, but the Ravage will get to the heart of us soon.

  Arrant saw at a glance what he meant. The Shiver Barrens were going to win their battle. They were going to pour every grain of sand they had available, the whole band of dancing sands between the Fourth and the Fifth Rake, into that sea of purulence until they had shredded every Ravage creature and suffocated every Ravage sore in their own vast ocean of sand. Not even the setting of the sun would stop them because the Ravage heat alone would be enough to keep them moving, to draw them on. But in their enthusiasm, in their unbridled, unreasoning desire to help, they were going to be the death of the Mirage Makers and their Mirage. They were forcing the Ravage into deep-troughed swells that were going to swamp the islands before the first of the Shiver Barrens could get to them.

  ‘Oh cabochon, I’m sorry,’ Arrant said. I’m so sorry.

  This will save Kardiastan. The Ravage dies, here, today, with us both. Resigned, sad, accepting. We did well, brother.

  ‘We did, didn’t we?’

  Even the warriors at Raker’s Camp will be singing our praises. Imagine that, Arrant. Epics recited around the fire at night of Arrant and Tarran, heroes of Kardiastan.

  He laughed, wondering if it might one day be true. ‘I’d rather be alive,’ he said, and then fell silent as he was forced to deal with another oncoming wave of Ravage beasts. The effort of it left him gasping. When he could speak again, he asked, ‘Do you know anything about Father? About any of them?’

  No, I’m sorry. We are too weak to feel anyone. He hesitated, reluctant to say what was in his mind. Arrant—

  ‘Yes?’

  I think I belong with them. The Mirage Makers. Do you mind?

  He minded; he minded terribly. It took all he had to hide his horror of a lonely death. But he knew Tarran was right: his brother belonged with the Mirage Makers, with his own kind. He had lived with them all his life. They were his real family. He was part of them. ‘I love you, Tarran,’ he said. ‘Cabochon, you don’t know how much.’ Tears blurred away the reality of the horrors he faced.

  I think I do, Tarran said softly. I love you too. Your mind’s a muddled cesspit of idiocy sometimes—but I wouldn’t change a single witless inanity of it. Go, and die well, brother. Wade into those bastards and give ‘em a taste of perdition!

  And he was gone.

  Arrant faced that mass of hate and mindless bloodlust alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Miragerin was fretting. As they rode towards Arrant and Temellin, she asked Samia for the third time, ‘You are sure he was all right?’

  Samia, half-amused by Sarana’s anxiety, hid a smile. ‘Positive. He had a fall from the shleth, and the necklet burned his neck a little, but he was fine. Really.’ To think there had been a time when she’d been scared of meeting Sarana Solad. She’d heard all the stories: a woman who had been a ruthless agent of the Exaltarchy, then a great Magoroth warrior who had turned back an invasion single-handedly, then a rebel leader who had terrorised the legions, then a visionary ruler of Tyrans. Some called her a leader of genius, others a power-hungry Magoria. It depended on which tale you believed. But now that Samia was getting to know her, it turned out that she was also a mother worried about her son, and a woman anxious about the man she loved. ‘I like her,’ Samia thought.

  ‘And Firgan’s dead?’ Garis asked.

  She turned to him, wondering what to say. She had skimmed that part, thinking it was Arrant’s story to tell—or not. ‘Magori-firgan’s two shleths came back to the rake,’ she said neutrally, ‘but he didn’t.’

  Garis and Sarana exchanged glances over her head.

  ‘Idiot,’ she thought. ‘As if you can fool either of these two.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ her father said, and it took her a moment to realise he was not referring to Firgan or his shleths. He was staring at what had once been the Mirage. ‘There’s a sudden upsurge in activity along the, um, shoreline.’

  She turned her head to look. It did resemble a shore, but the sea beyond was a sore in the landscape. And he was probably going to die there. Arrant too.

  Her breath speeded up, her skin went clammy. ‘Don’t think about it,’ she told herself.

  Then she saw what her father meant. Where the Ravage sore met the rake, there was a line of seething monsters in the shallows. And they were scrabbling to haul themselves up on the rock.

  ‘Ocrastes’ balls,’ Garis muttered, and that in itself was an indication of his shock. He didn’t usually swear by Tyranian gods. In fact he usually didn’t curse at all, at least not in front of Samia.

  Dread grabbed at her throat and wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Let’s get to Temellin and Arrant as fast as we can,’ Sarana said, slapping her shleth prod down on the shoulder of her mount. It leaped forward in immediate obedience.

  It was tough to gallop along the rake. The rock, at a time in the far distant past, had been crumpled or carved by forces impossible to imagine. There were folds and pinnacles and dips and peaks, all of which should have been negotiated carefully rather than galloped across, but Sarana rode with reckless speed.

  Her impatience was contagious. ‘If she fears, then there is reason,’ Samia thought, and her own terror trembled behind the fragile veneer of her healer’s composure as she followed.

  The line of Ravage beasts edged their way up from the sea. Each time she looked, they had progressed higher, far too many for a handful of people—trapped between the Shiver Barrens and what had been the Mirage—to hold at bay. The sun was high in the sky; nightfall, when they could escape to the south, was still half a day distant. She tried to calculate the speed of the Ravage creatures compared to the length of the daylight hours. And concluded, with cold certainty, that time was on the side of the Ravage.

  Sarana was in the lead when they reached Arrant. Samia saw the Miragerin bring her shleth to an abrupt halt, still short of where he stood. Only when she and Garis galloped up to her side did they see why Sarana had stopped. A river blocked their way. Only there was no water—it was a river of sand, flowing Shiver Barrens sand. They were on one bank and Arrant was on the opposite side. The sands between raced towards the Ravage sea. The sound as they passed was no gentle song, but a whine like the furious hum of wasps from a disturbed nest, a sound of deadly intent. It raised the hairs on the back of her n
eck.

  For a sliver of time none of them moved or spoke. Arrant didn’t even know they were there. He had his back to them, and to the river. He was fighting desperately for his life, and he was losing. There was little power left in his sword. The beasts had moved much further up the rake on his side of the river than on theirs, and they had cornered him.

  Sarana had drawn her sword, and Garis drew his too, but both of them hesitated. Samia knew why. The river was about ten paces wide. They couldn’t stand too close to the edge for fear the sides would crumble. Arrant was at least a pace away from the edge on his side. Twelve paces separating them altogether. Most of the creatures were another couple of paces further back. Fourteen paces, which was beyond the normal limit of Magoroth sword power. The beam from Samia’s Illuser cabochon wouldn’t even reach that far.

  Sarana tried anyway. A gold beam shot across the river. It sliced into one of the closest creatures, which then toppled. They all watched, horrified, while it rose again in two pieces.

  Arrant looked back over his shoulder. ‘You trying to double my trouble?’ he shouted. There were burns and cuts all over him. His clothing was holed, rotted by whatever had splashed it. ‘Roast them before you cut them up!’

  ‘Gods, he can still joke?’ Samia thought, anguished.

  Sarana shouted back. ‘We’ll use a whirlwind!’ She let the colour in her sword build up again. ‘I can’t feel Temellin,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t feel him anywhere.’ Samia read her despair in the air, as cold as winter wind.

  Some time earlier and with grim determination, Arrant had decided he was not going to give up without a battle that would surely have gone down in history, if there had been anyone to see it. He laughed at the thought, with a strange, poignant happiness, as if he had sloughed off many unwanted burdens and rejoiced at his final freedom.

  Tarran was gone and there were no choices any more, and no uncertainties. He slashed and hacked and stabbed. He lopped heads and sliced open bellies; he cleaved skulls and gouged out eyes; he slit throats and severed limbs. Then he heaved the pieces into the flow of the Shiver Barrens. He stamped on those foul things, squelching them underfoot and then kicking them into the river of sand, shuddering as their ooze squished up between his toes and over his sandals. He was sprayed with their liquids and splashed with their blood. He was burned and lacerated, ripped and gashed. Those he didn’t tip into the sands, dragged their hacked parts together again into bizzare parodies of their real selves.

  The intense heat sucked the fluids away from his suppurating body. His tongue was swollen in his mouth, his lips were cracked and bleeding; thirst was twisting his insides with added pain. There might have been water in the rock pools, but he could not get to it.

  He retched, breathing in the stink. The smell burned in the dryness of his throat. He felt their hatred, their glee. These beasts had condemned themselves to ultimate death by leaving the fluid that protected them. The kin they’d left behind were fighting a futile battle, but they sensed Arrant’s defeat. Their maws slobbered in triumph, their blood-shot eyes gleamed with exultation.

  And still he laughed. His shoulders were knotted with pain, his clothes tattered, his skin covered with raw and bleeding patches. He was close to the limits of his endurance; of any man’s endurance, surely. He had done his best and his was the larger victory, not theirs.

  And then he was bathed in a faint gold light.

  He knew what it was. Cabochon light. He felt the gentle touch of its magic caress him, then pass on, to gain enough intensity to cut a Ravage beast in two. Which then reassembled itself. He brandished his gore-drenched sword at the wriggling mass of bodies in front of him and looked over his shoulder. His mother, Garis and Sam.

  There was nothing they could do to help him. Perhaps there was nothing they could do to help themselves, although they did at least have Magor power. He was so, so tired. He thought he made a joke, but didn’t know whether what he said was funny.

  He heard his mother shout back something about creating a whirlwind.

  ‘Don’t—don’t watch. There’s nothing you can do,’ he said aloud, hoping the others had enhanced their hearing, because he no longer had the strength to shout.

  A creature leaped to grab his arm, teeth sinking into his flesh, grating on bone. The pain was searing.

  He saw the whirlwind come spinning past him, cutting a swathe through the milling beasts, whisking them up into the air, tossing them into the Shiver Barrens river. But those that remained took no notice.

  He tried to lop off the head of the beast that held him, but lacked the strength. He chopped at it instead, weak strokes that did nothing but open up cuts the beast did not appear to feel.

  The whirlwind crept closer, trying to gather in the creatures that dragged their tortured bodies towards him. He felt the wind tear at him, whipping his hair across his face. He had long since lost the thong that kept it tied back. With one last thrust of his blade, he dislodged the beast that had clung to his arm. Blood dripped, sending the nearest creatures into a frenzy of teeth-snapping. His sword arm sagged. He no longer had the strength to hold it up.

  The whirlwind came closer. The spinning wall of it was studded with beasts now. The roar of it was a solid sound in his ears. He struggled for clarity of thought, and wondered if he’d be spun off his feet. He sank down to his knees, driven by weakness and the knowledge that he should keep low. But the move brought his throat that much closer to the teeth and claws of his attackers.

  The wind reached out and plucked his sword from his weakened grasp.

  He turned his head to look over his shoulder, to see once more three of the people he loved most in the world. Saw them through a haze of blood and pain. Garis and Sarana were pouring all they had into the whirlwind.

  ‘I love you all—’ he whispered, and something slammed into his chest. Dug its claws into his flesh. Under the impact, he began to fall backwards, into the Shiver Barrens.

  He thought, ‘Better to die in the sands than to feed the Ravage.’ He heard Samia scream.

  He fell, but never hit bottom.

  It was like falling into a torrent of stormwater. He hit the sand, was whirled downwards and then rose again to find himself being shot forward inside the rush of sand grains. The twisted creature that had hooked its claws into his chest was torn away. Flipped upside-down, then right-side-up, head above the torrent and snatching a breath, he was submerged again and choking on sand, then skimmed along the ground like a fallen rider dragged behind a runaway horse—he had no control. Clothes and skin burned away every time he touched rock. He was flayed, bruised and finally thrust once more to the surface, a pummelled wreck. It all happened so fast that the pain hadn’t yet managed to catch up.

  He emerged in the midst of a slaughter somewhere inside what had once been the Mirage, amazed to find himself still alive and borne along on the sands rather than battered by them. Grains entering his nose and mouth arrived more by accident than malice or design. The Shiver Barrens, he surmised, had more important enemies in mind than one poor ruin of a human being.

  The Ravage creatures clawed and bit and gnashed, to no avail. Their attackers were as ferocious as a swarm of maddened hornets, yet were no more than spinning sand grains slashing their prey with honed edges. The beasts tried to shrink away, but the Shiver Barrens spun whirlpools around each trapped victim, scoring them remorselessly until they were peeled open, layer after layer, and their blood and ichor was whirled out of them.

  Arrant was terrified of being sucked into one of these deadly gyrations, but was at the mercy of the unpredictable currents within the sands; it was all he could do to keep his head up. Borne to the crest of a swell, he saw in the distance the remains of the Mirage—pathetically little left now; just a few separate huddles of wilted flowers and flesh-coloured mounds already awash with the liquid of the Ravage, each of these embattled isles hardly larger than his bedroom back in Madrinya. And then he was down in the trough, trying to swim in sand to avoid a
splash of greenish blood and pus that was another Ravage creature in its death throes.

  A moment later he crested a wave again and glimpsed the shore where he had made his stand against the Ravage beasts. Sarana, Samia and Garis had retreated to the crest of the rake. They scanned the sea of sand. Looking for him. He was too weak to attract their attention, but Sarana, her sight enhanced, saw him anyway.

  He was being swept away from them, towards the Mirage, towards where Tarran was dying. ‘Perhaps the two of us can die together, after all,’ he thought.

  And then he was sucked under by a violent eddy, dragged down, scraped along the ground and tumbled. He struggled, unable to breathe without inhaling sand. Tried to push his way up to the surface—tried so hard…

  Back on the rake, Sarana cursed. ‘I won’t lose him,’ she said. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘If you go into that, you’ll die,’ Garis warned. ‘And if Temellin has already died along the rake somewhere, then your sword might be the last Mirager’s blade we’ll ever have. We need you, Sarana. You can’t risk yourself.’

  She turned on him in a fury. ‘And I need them!’ She took a calming breath. ‘Garis, there is always one last thing one can try. There’s always something.’

  Temellin almost made it.

  Because he could not see, his first intimation that there was something wrong came from his positioning powers. He was always aware of the Ravage creatures in their sea of muck, aching to get at him. One part of him kept them in mind, no matter what else he was doing. He knew, then, the moment they left the sea and crawled up onto the rake, even though their action seemed inexplicable. Slow the creatures may have been, but he felt them as far as his senses reached.

  He reined in his mount and considered his options. He was still much closer to Arrant than he was to Raker’s Camp. He could turn back, help his son if he needed it, and be helped in return. On the other hand, it was essential that the Magoroth in the camp knew what they had to do…