by Glenda Larke
‘Sarana and Garis are there for Arrant,’ he decided. ‘I’ll ride on.’
In the end, all he could do was rely on his mount because he could neither see nor feel the folds of the rock. He did force the shleth to find a way over the crest of the rake to the Shiver Barrens side. Away from the proximity of the beasts, the animal calmed and bore him on. He pushed it as fast as it would travel, but it was too experienced and wily to endanger itself on the uneven terrain.
They might have made it if they hadn’t reached an area, about three miles from the camp, where the rock bordering the Shiver Barrens was too rough and steep to cross and they were forced back to the Mirage side. By then the Ravage beasts were well up on the rock and wild to find prey. The shleth panicked and tried to bolt. Temellin did his best to calm it, did his best to guide it away from the attackers—but how much could a blind man do when he could not see much more than the difference between rock and sky? He used his sword power to create a whirlwind, and for a time he was able to blast a clear passage for them through the lines of waiting predators.
They might have made it, if the shleth’s instincts had not let it down. It entered a narrow defile between two arms of rock—thirty paces along, it proved to be a dead end. Temellin had to dismount and edge the beast backwards until it could be turned. By then the entrance to the defile was blocked with Ravage creatures.
He still had power, he could still create a whirlwind, but there were so many of them. By the time he had cleared a way free of the defile, his cabochon colour was dimming. He mounted again but the shleth was edgy, baulking at every movement, reaching back to pinch Temellin’s legs and thighs in its unhappy fear.
When he felt his power fading, he knew both he and his mount were doomed. Beasts brought the shleth down, clawing and ripping its legs to shreds, and then leaping to tear out its throat. Temellin managed to scrabble away, to back up against a wall of rock. His sword had no colour now, but he still had a little sensing power left. While that remained he could use his blade, he could defend himself.
‘I promise you,’ he snarled at the beasts, ‘this won’t be easy.’
Arrant’s first thought on waking was: ‘So there is an afterward.’ And then: ‘But I’m glad the priestesses of Tyrans are wrong about the nature of it.’ Then the pain arrived, and he thought perhaps he was indeed in Acheron. Or Hades. Or worse.
Yet what he was looking at was no Vortex of the Dead sweeping him down to Acheron, no whirlpool of the sad-eyed deceased serving out their time for their sins before they were allowed to rest. He was lying on his back looking up through a funnel, and his first impression—before the onslaught of the agony—was one of peace and silence. He was in a globe of still air. Outside, the sands of the Shiver Barrens blurred past in a Ravage sea. The funnel-neck led straight up to the surface. A moment later he decided that he was in fact breathing and could not therefore be dead after all.
And then he saw her. Sarana. She was outside the globe, a strangely ethereal naked figure that seemed to lack substance. She smiled and held up her cabochon. He was uncomprehending. He could see right through her. The sands of the Barrens swept through her, apparently unfelt. He frowned, wondering if he was dead after all. Or dreaming.
She indicated her cabochon again and he saw that it seemed to have been split. Realisation came. And the pain, waves of it to leave him gasping.
She was an essensa. She had split her cabochon using her own sword to release her spirit self. And, he guessed, used her positioning powers to find him. Then she’d built a ward, the globe, around him, extended it up to the surface so that air could flow in. Temellin had done it for her once; now she did it for him.
He wasn’t dead, not yet. But he felt he’d been skinned alive. Between the moans he couldn’t hold back, he said, ‘I’m blessed if I know how you’re going to get me out of this one.’
She gave him a look that seemed to say she didn’t know how he’d ever managed to get into this one, then pointed behind her. Garis was there too, also in essensa form, and looking far from happy.
Arrant breathed in quick gasps, trying to hold down the pain enough to enable him to think. He had no idea what they intended and they had no way of telling him. Essensas could not speak, or in fact move anything in their environment. They passed through the solid, or the solid passed through them.
Garis, as far as he could see, was building another ward, extending it out from the globe into a long box-like tunnel that shut out the whirling sand grains.
And that was when Arrant understood. They were going to take it in turns to build wards, one after the other, all the way to the shore, like locks on a Tyranian river.
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I can see what you intend to do. I’m not going to be any use to you though, you know. My cabochon is drained.’
Sarana nodded and walked her fingers through the air.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know about walking exactly, but I think I could manage a crawl.’
She nodded and smiled encouragement. There was no joy there, though.
He answered the unspoken questioning in her eyes. ‘He rode back towards Raker’s Camp. Before the beasts came out of the sea.’
She nodded, accepting that he did not know Temellin’s fate, and looked away. Perhaps she wanted to hide her pain. Or perhaps she could not bear to see his.
Garis completed his ward and the two of them opened a door between the warded areas. He crawled from one into the other, each movement a lancing rawness that swallowed every thought, that made existence seem undesirable. Garis closed the ward behind him and the first globe collapsed as Sarana floated away to build another in front of Garis’s.
And so he dragged his flayed body from one warded area to another, to lie sheltered within each for a blessed moment in time before he had to move again. And through it all, Garis and Sarana drifted unperturbed by the sandstorm that whirled through them.
Something bothered him about that. He tried to concentrate. Anything was better than allowing the pain to swamp him.
Of course. This was the Shiver Barrens now and you weren’t supposed to be able to use Magor magic in the Barrens. The Barrens ate Magor magic. He wanted to ask how the wards were possible, but then realised he knew the answer. The presence of the Mirage Makers held the Shiver Barrens power at bay, just as they always had. Which meant Tarran was still alive. For now.
Tarran? Tarran are you there?
No answer.
Vortexdamn, he had to move again…
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Arrant crawled out of the sea of sand. The two essensas winked back into the bodies lying on the rock. Garis groaned. Sarana rolled over and used her right hand to pull her swordblade from her left palm, where it had been driven through her cabochon. Then she did the same for Garis.
Dead Ravage beasts were heaped up around them like stacked carcasses in a slaughterhouse. One functioning part of his head noted the unlikelihood that the four of them had killed so many. It was surreal. ‘Who killed them all?’ he asked.
‘They just died,’ Samia said. She was holding his hand, tight. Waves rippled through him, dimming the pain. ‘Up and down the shore, everywhere. Possibly because they were too long out of the Ravage sore,’ she said. ‘For a long while new ones kept crawling over the dead to get at us. Then they stopped coming because there weren’t any more new ones to come. The Shiver Barrens had killed them.’
‘All the Ravage beasts are dead?’
‘There are more still out there, in the sea, but they are cut off from us now by a wide band of the dancing sands.’
He tried to focus on her. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he croaked. He was beginning to feel better, and blessed her healing. ‘Feels good,’ he said. A moment later it felt even better, when she lifted his head into her lap.
He asked for water, and it was Sarana who offered him a waterskin. He drank greedily from it, rejoicing in how wonderful a simple drink could be. When he handed the waterskin back, she took
his free hand. Her eyes were flooded deep with pain.
‘Father?’ he asked.
‘He didn’t come back,’ she said.
And then he remembered the rest. He struggled to rise, desperate to see past Samia to the Mirage.
‘The Mirage Makers are still alive,’ Samia said, and propped him up against her so he could see over the sea of sand. It had spread wider and wider, fanning out as it went, but it still hadn’t reached the Mirage. The edges of the fan boiled and bubbled with thrashing bodies. The waves created travelled outwards in concentric rings.
The flowers had all gone, and so had the islands. Instead there was a single finger of rock pointing skywards like a sign of hope. Behind it the sky was blood-red with the setting sun.
‘That’s them?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘They managed to join the islands together, what was left of them, by floating one to the other on top of the sea, and then they changed themselves into that.’
‘That’s all?’
‘I think so,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know if they all made it.’
While he watched, he saw the base of the rock crumble as a wave of Ravage liquid hit; the pinnacle was suddenly lower. A Mirage Maker lost? Or just more of the Mirage? He had no way of telling. His hope vacillated. He murmured helplessly, ‘They still may not survive.’ It would be a race between their ability to maintain themselves and the speed with which the sands could reach them.
She didn’t answer but held him a little tighter.
Next to them, Garis groaned and stirred. ‘Vortexdamn it, Sarana, that’s the most tiring thing I’ve ever had to do. Blessed if I know how you managed to get yourself halfway across Kardiastan like that all those years ago.’
‘I had help, if you remember.’
It took Arrant a moment to realise that she meant him.
‘Well, don’t anybody ask me to do it twice in a lifetime.’ Garis sat up groggily and examined his cabochon with care. There was no sign of a split, no mark to indicate it had been pierced by his own sword. A cut that had been so catastrophic to Arrant when performed by another’s blade, left no trace when made by the point of one’s own weapon. Apparently reassured, Garis looked out across the Ravage and then back at Arrant. ‘By all that’s holy, m’lad, when you decide to gain control of your cabochon, you don’t believe in half measures, do you? Gouge out a canyon, rearrange a few of Kardiastan’s topographical features, shift an entire desert, arouse the ire of a few thousand ravening beasts—’
‘Tarran and I decided it was worth the risk. We thought it would work.’ He watched the Mirage and saw the rock tower slip a little lower into the ooze. ‘Looks like we were wrong.’ That was Tarran dying, there. And he couldn’t help him.
Garis stood, to gaze at the pinnacle. His face was paler than normal. He said, ‘It’s hard to think they might die. They have made us what we are. I was born in the land they made, lived there as a child.’
‘The sands are not that far from them now. They may survive,’ Samia said. ‘And the Ravage is doomed.’
Oh, Tarran, can’t you hold on a little longer?
‘There’s a breeze,’ Garis said, suddenly alert. ‘If we get another Ravage-gale tonight the last of those beasts might seek a way out into Kardiastan.’
‘Yes,’ Arrant said. ‘Tarran warned me of that too. About twenty Mirage Makers have been captured by Ravage beasts.’
‘We can try to stop it if it comes. If we’ve regained some of our strength by then,’ Garis said.
‘How can we stop a wind?’ Samia asked, dismayed.
‘We’ll power our own whirlwind,’ Sarana said. Her anger was sharp in the cooling air; her anxiety an acrid overlay. Her gaze kept straying in the direction Temellin had taken. ‘We won’t let any of them escape, not if I can help it.’
Garis looked across at her. ‘Still can’t sense him?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I’m going after him.’
‘We have a shleth on this side of the channel,’ Samia said. ‘One of Firgan’s. And the wreck of a wayhouse mount too. They are on the other side of the crest, near the Shiver Barrens. The Ravage beasts didn’t get that far.’
‘I’ll get you Firgan’s,’ Garis said to Sarana and walked away.
‘How did you get here?’ Arrant asked Samia, suddenly realising that she had been on the other side of the channel.
‘Papa built a warded tunnel for me and I walked through.’
He nodded, and lay there thinking of Temellin. He stirred in misery, which was a mistake because pain settled into his skin as though he were lying on a shard-impregnated blanket. He sucked in a breath with an audible groan. Samia frowned at him to be still and renewed her pain block.
Sarana must have felt his despair, because her hand tightened on his. She knew exactly what he was thinking. ‘He wouldn’t have turned back to get you,’ she said. ‘He would have had faith in you, in your ability to look after yourself. He went on to Raker’s Camp because they had to be warned. They had to be told what was needed. He might even have made it.’
He was silent. They both knew there was no way to be certain until someone brought news, or one of them went to find out. ‘Help me to sit up,’ he said to Samia.
‘Arrant,’ Samia said, deliberately changing the subject as she eased him into a sitting position, ‘I am aching to know. What made you think of cutting that channel?’
He opened his mouth to begin an explanation—and was knocked flat, whacked down hard as if he’d been trampled on. Fortunately he fell back against Samia. She made a sound somewhere between a squawk and a whoosh. He shrieked as agony rasped down his back when he fell.
Sorry about that, said a familiar voice. Just passing through.
‘Tarran?’ Arrant asked, unbelieving. His brother had always slipped into his mind so silently, so gently. By contrast, this visit—if that was what it had been—had possessed all the subtlety of a Tyranian legion on the march. What was going on?
Tarran didn’t answer; his presence had vanished as abruptly as he had arrived.
Sarana drew in a sharp breath. ‘It disappeared! Just—just winked out. I was looking at it.’ She was staring out over the moving sands where they battled the edge of the Ravage sea. Where the two met, a thrashing, choppy wave stretched off to the right and left, apparently without end. The pinnacle that had been the Mirage Makers had vanished. ‘Arrant, what just happened?’
He levered himself up, gritting his teeth, wanting to see. There was nothing remaining, not a ripple. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They left. They went somewhere else. I think—I think what is left of the Ravage must be so weak the Mirage Makers were finally able to leave it behind.’
He closed his eyes. Samia was flooding him with the opiate of her healing. He tried to fight it, but it felt too good. He dozed. He was vaguely aware when Garis returned with the shleths. He heard him arguing with Sarana. She wanted to ride after Temellin, and Garis wanted to go with her. She refused to let him, and it was she who prevailed.
He felt her take up his hand, and opened his eyes. He saw her smile, but there was little joy in her expression. ‘One way or another,’ she said, ‘I will find him. I have my senses. I will return as quickly as possible. Or I will send a messenger.’
He nodded.
‘You did well, Arrant,’ she said softly. ‘You saved us all. Garis tells me that the Shiver Barrens still pour out through your channel, and that the level of sand in the Barrens has dropped noticeably.’
‘I—’
She placed a finger over his lips. ‘I’ll tell him everything. I’ll tell him his son will be Mirager one day. Ten years,’ she added. ‘I’ll give you and Samia ten years of peace and time to yourselves. The time Tem and I never had. Then I will happily relinquish the post of Mirager-heir to you again.’
She blew him a kiss and mounted her shleth to ride away into the gloom.
‘Does she really think he’s alive?’ Samia asked.
‘She hopes,’
Garis said.
‘She can’t bear to think of the alternative,’ Arrant murmured and then added, speaking to Garis, ‘And she didn’t want you there when—if—she finds out he’s dead.’ Fatigue caught at him once more, and he began to drift away, thinking, ‘You wanted me to survive, Father, and I did. And I will go on, no matter what happens. And nothing will make me love you less—or more—than I do right now.’
He woke several times that night. The first time he was dimly aware of Samia moving around the shleths, fixing nosebags; of Garis cooking over an open fire. Mirage knows where he’d scrounged the fuel from—shleth pats, perhaps?
And towards dawn he woke aware that he was surrounded by an outpouring of power. He jolted upright.
Garis and Samia were standing together, facing what had been the Ravage sea. Garis held his glowing Magor sword pointed up, and a beam of light ran from its tip. A line of red power coming from Samia’s cabochon joined it not far above their heads. Just past the point where the two met, Magor power transformed to a twisting gyre of light and wind, speeding upwards. Arrant stood, his gaze following the gyre until it vanished into the looming darkness of cloud in the sky. He could hear it: the rushing, howling whine of a ravage-gale.
‘Sarana’s idea,’ Garis said as Arrant came to stand beside him, ‘in case some of the last Ravage beasts try to escape on their wind. We’re letting our wind rip that gale to pieces in the hope that the beasts will fall out.’ He nodded to the east. ‘Look, you can see where she is doing the same thing over there. And people from Raker’s Camp have seen and are copying us, too.’
The spin of glowing wind met the blackness above; silence met howl, a Magor whirlwind met the Ravage in explosions of light and colour and rage. Something keened high up in the air. A moment later, a body crashed down onto the rock of the rake, followed by a thud further away on the now-stilled sands.