Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  Arrant looked at what Garis and Samia had created and then down at his cabochon. Samia had sealed it once again the night before, and the colour was returning, but when he called on it, nothing responded. ‘Nothing has changed,’ he thought with wry amusement. ‘The whole world has altered, and still Arrant has no control over his power. I remain an incompetent Magoroth to the end.’ At least he could laugh about it now. It no longer mattered. ‘I am what I am.’

  He wrapped himself tight in his cloak and watched the battle overhead, just as when he was a child in Tyrans he had stood in the Stronghold and watched the lightning of thunderstorms over the canyons. There was no way of knowing what was happening. Garis, as a precaution against being hit by a falling Ravage beast, built a ward over their heads, anchoring it to the rake. Gradually the wind dwindled, but by then, the clouds seemed to have dissipated.

  ‘There might be some that reach Kardiastan,’ Samia said.

  Her father nodded. ‘Possible. But before Temellin left Madrinya, he sent messengers to warn every single vale and town.’

  ‘There will be deaths nonetheless,’ Arrant thought, but he didn’t voice the fear.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Samia asked.

  ‘Sore. Like a duck that’s been plucked alive. Weak.’

  ‘You must eat,’ Garis said. He fetched a bowl of food and gave it to him. Whatever it was, it was cold and tasteless, but he ate it anyway.

  Garis yawned mightily. ‘Dawn is not far off. In the morning we will know more. In the meantime, I think we can all safely get some sleep. I don’t think there is much left of the Ravage now.’ He rolled himself in his cloak and lay down with his back to them.

  Arrant fell asleep in Samia’s arms, her healing power gently washing through him even as she slept, taking away the last of the pain, easing the aches and furthering the healing of all the sores and the grazes.

  His last thought before he slipped into sleep was of his father.

  Temellin couldn’t understand why he wasn’t dead. He slumped against the rock, incapable of movement, beyond anything except the next tortured breath.

  They’d torn off his left leg and eaten it. He had heard the slurping, the crunching of bone—and for the first time in his life he had been glad he was blind. He’d managed to stop the bleeding by tying his cloth belt around what remained of his thigh, but he’d refused to use the faint remnants of his power to ease the agony that had begun once the initial shock had subsided. He preferred to keep that tiny pulse of power alive so he could sense his enemies.

  And sense them he did, as they unexpectedly died. He didn’t understand what had happened, but he felt them fade out around him, a slow slide into oblivion, until he was surrounded by dead bodies.

  The irony was almost too much to bear. Their deaths came too late to save him. There were too many poisonous bites, too much blood loss, too little power left to call upon for healing. His right arm was broken and bleeding, his right leg bitten to the bone. His flesh burned with the corrosive saliva they had left behind. And now they were dead, and the only thing that kept him alive was the kernel of Magoroth magic he kept safe in his cabochon, leaking it drop by precious drop so that he could survive a little longer.

  He was waiting. Waiting for the right ending. He would wait as long as it took.

  ‘I knew you would come,’ he whispered.

  He was bathed in golden light. Magoroth light. The magic of what he had been, symbol of all that had made him special. Its gentle caress was a balm to all his wounds, rendering them irrelevant. He felt at ease, without pain at last. It would be the last thing he would see, that light.

  ‘I’ll heal all I can and then fetch Samia—’ she began.

  He laughed, and used the name he loved best for her, the one he had first known. ‘Ah, Derya, when have you ever refused to face the truth? Before this night is over, I’ll be gone. No healing would repair what has been done here. The only reason I am alive now…is because I refused to go before I said goodbye to you. Now tell me what happened.’

  She rested his head on her lap and stroked his forehead. ‘A happy ending,’ she said. He could not see her, but the golden light glinted in the tears on her cheeks, sparks of pure light in the grey world of his vision. ‘Arrant and Tarran worked out a way to kill the Ravage and smother its sores. The Ravage is gone, Tem, drowned by the Shiver Barrens.’ Quickly she told him what had happened, finishing by saying, ‘We aren’t too sure what happened to the Mirage, but Arrant is positive they are alive still. He saved them. He and Tarran. Your two sons.’

  He smiled as he felt her truth, the relief and joy almost too much. ‘You wouldn’t lie to a dying man, would you?’

  Her laugh was more a hiccup. ‘All right, I’ll admit Arrant is sore and bruised, but nothing more than that. He and Samia and Garis are fine. Sandhells, Tem—can’t you hang on? For me? We have a life to live.’

  He raised his hand and caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. ‘We had our moment, and it was good. Better than I deserved. We loved, sands, Derya—how we loved! Was that not fine?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it was. The best. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want it ever to end.’

  ‘All things end. And a poor ending doesn’t make the good times sad. As for Arrant—we didn’t do so badly after all, did we? He is a man worthy of this land and the sword he will have one day. And you are the Miragerin now.’

  ‘I never wanted it.’

  ‘Yet you will do well.’

  He felt himself slipping away. He couldn’t feel his legs any more. He was dying a little at a time. ‘I return to the land to nurture those who follow,’ he whispered. ‘What more can one of the Magor ask?’

  She bit her lip. He did not see. He saw nothing now, not even the Magor glow. The numbness reached his chest, his arms.

  ‘Give my sword back to the Mirage Makers,’ he whispered.

  They were the last words he spoke.

  Arrant was the first to wake in the morning.

  Everything was quiet. He raised his head. Garis and Samia slept on. The hobbled shleths were nearby, standing quietly. Garis must have fetched their mounts from the other side of the channel. Gently, he dropped a kiss on Samia’s lips and disengaged himself from her arms. Mindful of his newly healing skin, he stood to look out over the Mirage. Except he was looking at a plain of sand. There was no Ravage, no Mirage. Nothing but a desert of partially frosted sand as far as the eye could see. A new Shiver Barrens lying unmoving in the cool of dawn. And not a Ravage beast in sight.

  No, not quite unmoving. Already the grains were lifting in answer to the warmth of the sun’s first rays. Already a new dance was beginning, although compared to the previous day’s frenzied rush, this promised to be as subdued as a mourning dance devised for burial griefs.

  He wandered away to see the cut he had made through the rake. It was empty. Nothing more poured through; the flood of sand had ceased. The sides of the channel, buffed by thousands of grains on their wild rush through to the other side, were as smooth and shiny as polished obsidian. Curiosity stirred him. He walked the length of the cut, to the other side of the rake. His body was a mass of aches; even the soles of his feet hurt, but he ignored it all.

  He didn’t quite know what he’d expected to see, but it wasn’t this. On the far side of the valley opposite him he could just see the peaks of the Fourth Rake. In between, to the left and right, where once there had been the Shiver Barrens between the Fourth and the Fifth Rake, there was nothing. There was no sand left, not in any direction. It was a scene of utter desolation, of vacancy. This section of the Shiver Barrens had vanished, leaving behind a valley of solid red rock. It wasn’t quite flat; there were gentle gullies and hillocks, all with edges softened by the generation of moving sand.

  He found himself waiting, although he couldn’t have said for what. It seemed so obvious that such an emptiness had to be filled.

  The sunlight came first, moving along the valley floor as the sun rose. Then he saw movem
ent out of the corner of his eye, several hundred paces away to his left. There was a patch of something there, a large irregular shape a few hundred paces long consisting of something—soil?—that didn’t match the surrounding rock. He walked towards it, and then broke into a run. As he watched, a stream trickled out of it and ran down into a dip. But it wasn’t a stream of water. It was grass, and other plant life. Sedges, bushes, flowers springing away from the mound in a long living line, lush and colourful: gold, green, emerald, purple. The stream sang as it flowed, a full-throated warble of sound like a songbird at the dawn of a desert-season day. On either side of it, other things began to appear, slowly at first. A cottage roofed with flowers, a lizard with ten legs, a low rain cloud—on its back, if that was possible, with the droplets of water travelling upwards, then falling back down again in a rainbow shower.

  ‘Tarran?’ he whispered, full of hope, full of wonder.

  I’m here, his brother said, slipping into his mind. Hey, what do you know, Arrant—we both made it, after all. Arrant felt his laughter. And you, my fumble-witted brother, brought off something of a miracle.

  ‘Not alone,’ he said.

  Near enough alone. We know how much we owe to you, Arrant.

  ‘Was that really you that thundered through my mind?’

  Yeah, well I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t alone either, you see. I had the others with me.

  He was incredulous. ‘You mean—you came through my mind with all the Mirage Makers in tow?’

  Er, well, yes, as a matter of fact. A few thousand of them. At the time most of the Ravage beasts, what was left of them, were fully occupied with dying. It seemed a good bet that we could sever the connection and leave without taking them with us, if we could only work out a way to leave. And the only way to do that was for the others to hook themselves to me when I came to your mind. I made it as quick as possible. I didn’t want to confuse them with your chaotic thoughts. Coming in was actually the easy bit; the tough bit was getting out again when there was no Mirage Maker out there anywhere to hook on to.

  ‘So what did you do?’

  We used a beetle instead. Found it trundling along the rocks by the edge of what used to be the Shiver Barrens. We’re grateful it was there—we really didn’t have the strength to go any further than that. I must say its mind is strange though, and I’m not sure what sort of a Mirage Maker it’s going to make, but we’re stuck with it now. Did you know that once a male beetle gets a whiff of a female, they can’t think of anything else? It’s rather tiresome.

  He paused and then added, Come to think of it, that’s not much different to you whenever Samia is around. Even now—

  ‘Private, Tarran! Definitely not for fraternal consumption.’

  Spoilsport. He added, more soberly, We took a bit of a risk using you. More than you know. He fell silent.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me?’

  Um, yes. For a start, if we’d been wrong about leaving the Ravage behind, we could have made an awful mess of you, brother. And to tell the truth, we did have some of the Ravage with us.

  He was horrified. ‘You what?’

  Well, we couldn’t leave those Mirage Makers behind, could we? The ones that had been captured by the Ravage beasts. So we sort of wrapped them up inside us and brought them along. If I’d been wrong about your mental strength, you would have died. We decided to take the risk because you had once been part of us before. Remember that time when you were asleep and joined us?

  Arrant shuddered. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, waking up to find you’d become part of an entire land. ‘Am I hearing this right? You’re admitting there’s something good inside this head of mine?’

  Marvellous what keeping the right company will do. You’re improving, lad, improving. I’ll make a rational thinker out of you yet.

  Arrant waved a hand at the crazy world spreading across the valley in front of him. ‘You? Rational? Get out of here!’

  I’m going, I’m going. Want to anyway—this is the best fun I’ve had in years. Arrant, we are without pain. It is—wondrous.

  ‘But you brought part of the Ravage with you! Won’t the same thing happen all over again?’

  Not this time. The rest of me is absorbing the beasts back into themselves, a little here, a little there. They will be different—a bit more like me, perhaps, which will be interesting. It was wrong what they did, so very long ago, Arrant, and we all know it now. To be complete, you have to acknowledge the evil within and deal with it—not parcel it up and pretend it doesn’t have power. He nodded Arrant’s head in the direction of the new Mirage. It won’t be quite as it was before. They have changed.

  ‘I think we all have. You—you don’t know if Temellin’s all right, do you?’

  There was a pause that lasted too long as Tarran considered the implications of the question. No. I’m sorry. One of Arrant’s hands, without any volition of his own, waved at the spreading Mirage. That’s all we are at the moment. Some of us didn’t make it. It will be a long time before we have the strength to be what we were, to know what happens at a distance. He paused once more, and added soberly, Temellin is Magor-strong, Arrant. And wise. Do not grieve yet. Perhaps he rode on to the safety of Raker’s Camp.

  Arrant nodded. ‘Perhaps.’ Perhaps not. He had also been a blind man riding alone. A single Magor sword.

  You aren’t alone now are you? Tarran asked.

  ‘No. Samia and Garis are here. I left them asleep on the rake.’

  You feel hungry. And a bit…gritty. Why don’t you go and get them? Bring them for breakfast and a bath? I’m sure we can arrange something.

  ‘Are we welcome?’ Arrant asked, remembering the terms of the Covenant.

  Always. Without you, all of you, we wouldn’t be here at all. We will have to draw up a new Covenant, I think.

  ‘You will stay here, in what used to be the Shiver Barrens?’

  For now, anyway.

  ‘A bath does sound inviting.’

  Good. I’ll talk to you later, then.

  Tarran slipped away, but Arrant stood for a while longer, watching as the Mirage Makers produced a grove of fruit trees. Too bad they seemed to be growing goldfish.

  ‘Oh, sweet cabochon,’ Samia whispered in his ear.

  He jumped. As usual, his positioning powers had not given him any warning.

  She put an arm around his shoulders. ‘They’re building a new Mirage. How wonderful. Tarran?’

  ‘He’s there. We’re invited for breakfast. And he mentioned a bath.’

  ‘Oh! That’s even better. A bath—how did he know what I needed? I’ll go and get Papa. And all our things.’ She lingered, though, to ask, ‘The—the Mirager?’

  ‘No news yet.’

  ‘You think he died, don’t you?’

  He hesitated. ‘I think the Ravage would have found it easy to overwhelm him because he couldn’t see.’ There, he’d said it. Put it out in the open. ‘I’ll cope, no matter what. Because he would expect it of me.’

  She touched his cheek in concern. ‘If the worst has happened, you will not be alone, you know. Not ever again. I don’t care if you are Mirager-heir, or Mirager or just plain Arrant the bridge builder of Madrinya, and I don’t care if I only have a red cabochon to your gold. You and I are going to wed.’

  He took her into his arms and buried his face in her neck and hair. ‘I think I could bear anything if you were there. Have you any idea of how much I love you?’

  ‘Probably about as much as I love you,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I could stand here and kiss you and have you murmur sweet nothings in my ear and all sorts of nice things like that, but I think I need breakfast and a bath more. Wait here—I’ll be right back.’

  He had to laugh as she strode purposefully away to fetch Garis. Prosaic, pragmatic, wonderful Samia. Still the same girl who had dug him out of the ward Lesgath had placed over him.

  He shifted his gaze back to the Mirage. The grass spread out towards him, f
ollowed by a paved path that led straight to his feet from the cottage.

  Tarran reappeared in his head. Live well, brother. I’ll drop in from time to time no matter where you are, if only to help you out with that cabochon of yours. There’s no reason you can’t be Mirager one day, not if I can be around when you need me.

  ‘It’s true,’ Arrant thought in sudden wonder. With the Ravage gone, Tarran could come whenever he felt like it. Whenever Arrant asked. ‘Do that, Tarran,’ he whispered, still choked with emotion. ‘You do that. Oh, and one other thing.’ He fumbled deep in his belt pouch and drew out the marble vial he had placed there. He tipped the contents into his palm. A few tiny gold splinters sparkled in the sun. ‘Serenelle,’ he said, and his voice was husky. ‘Would you, I don’t know, make something to remember her by? I’d like to think that some part of her goes into building a new Mirage. She deserved that much, at least.’

  Serenelle? She’s dead?

  He nodded. ‘Firgan.’

  Ah. The bastard. We’ll do something. A breeze came out of nowhere and whisked the flecks of gold from his fingers, into the air and out of sight. Leave it up to us. And when you meet the Miragerin-sarana, tell her thanks from me.

  ‘Thanks?’

  Yes. For winning that fight with my mother. I am eternally grateful I wasn’t born human.

  He touched Arrant’s mind with love, curled his brother’s lips up in a smile and then blurred back into the Mirage.

  The smile lingered, and then faded as Arrant’s positioning powers chose to work. He raised his eyes to the top of the crest of the rake. A rider was poised there. A Magoroth sword lay across the pommel of her saddle. Not hers. She was wearing hers.

  And she was alone. From where he stood he could feel the shattered pieces of her grief tearing her apart.

  The Mirager was dead.

  Long live the Miragerin.

  From my early childhood, my life was paved with the mosaics of illusion, each piece another tale of deceit, delusion, betrayal…