The Shadow of Tyr

by Glenda Larke

  Every few weeks a note, written in Kardi, would arrive from Ligea. The three of them—Narjemah, Foran and Arrant—mapped the progress of her forces on a chart Foran had drawn, to show their slow and steady spread southwards from the mountains of northern Tyrans and Quyr. By the onset of the following snow-season, the rebels had seized the northernmost paveway that connected Tyr’s sister city of Getria in the east to the province of Cormel—once the independent kingdom of Kormelya—in the west. Ligea’s troops manned the wayhouses and collected the taxes. Of the cities along the paveway, Getria alone remained in the hands of the Exaltarch’s legions.

  In the meantime, Temellin wrote of successes in Kardiastan, Brand described how the Gharials now controlled the Delta in Altan, Garis sent word about the slaves of Pilgath who had seized that city, only to lose it several months later and be massacred to the last child.

  Arrant heard it all, but he was only six and the places seemed far away and no more relevant than a myth told about the gods of Elysium. Here in the Stronghold, he fought with his wooden sword on the training grounds. Here in the Stronghold, the worst battle was the one he had with control over his own Magor abilities.

  Another snow-season came and went, and Arrant turned seven. He hadn’t seen Ligea in a year.

  And he was still an incompetent Magoroth.

  The chill of the early-morning mountain air, borne on gusts of wind whining around the stonework, sliced through Arrant’s cloak to lay the cold along his skin. He tried not to mind. This was one of his tasks: guard duty for an hour a day. Alone, there in the tower that overlooked both the trail down to Prianus and the trail up to the Quyr Plateau. Although there were other guards up and down the trails, it pleased him that he was entrusted with the responsibility, surely one of the most important of the Stronghold. He felt grown-up, even though his seventh anniversary day was only two months behind him.

  Because he couldn’t rely on his cabochon powers, he had to scan the land, watching for movement, for disturbed animals and birds, just as Gevenan had taught him to do.

  That morning, however, there was nothing untoward and he was delighted when Tarran popped into his mind. His brother was excited, he could tell. His mind gleamed and shimmered, full of bubbles like froth in a waterfall.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, thrilled just by Tarran’s feel. ‘What’s happened?’

  They are leaving! Tarran cried. They are going…

  ‘Who’s leaving? Leaving what?’ He tried to make sense of the pictures passing through his mind, but they flashed by too quickly, thought and then unthought as quick as lightning strikes.

  They are leaving the Mirage.

  ‘Who is?’

  Everyone.

  ‘Everyone?’

  Yes.

  ‘Why?’

  Because the last of the Exaltarchy’s legions is leaving Kardiastan. The land is free! There is no need for anyone to stay in the Mirage any more.

  In spite of his own jubilation, Arrant also felt a pang of disappointment. He would never see the Mirage. He would never know the Mirage Makers—except for Tarran, of course—not in the way his parents had. All he would ever know would be a hazy shape beneath the Shiver Barrens, handing him his Magor sword.

  The disappointment swelled to a pang of loss, even as he understood the stupidity of that emotion. ‘I’m glad,’ he said, ‘for everyone. For the Mirage Makers, too. Temellin said you did not like us being there.’

  Tarran hesitated, apparently striving for an explanation that would make sense to them both. The others don’t understand any of you. The way you think. The way you behave. It is—was—sometimes hard not to hurt you accidentally. He paused, still groping for words. I understand better than the others. Because there’s part of me that’s human. And because of you—you show me what it is like to be human. You are my brother.

  For one wild moment, Arrant felt an overwhelming desire to touch Tarran. To hug him. To have the impossible come true. ‘I—I am glad Kardiastan is free,’ he said, choking back the emotion. ‘Have you—have you seen Temellin lately?’

  No. He has not been back to the Mirage for a long time. From what we hear, he is still safe. Him and Korden and others of the Ten lead the fighting.

  The Ten. The Ten Magoroth, Pinar and Temellin included, who had escaped the massacre at the Shimmer Festival because his grandfather, Solad the Mirager, had sent them away.

  Think, Arrant, now Temellin will be able to send Magor to help you.

  Arrant shivered. Perhaps his father would come here, himself, to Tyrans. Was it possible? Arrant wasn’t sure he wanted that. He wouldn’t know what to say to him. How did you talk to a father who didn’t want you? He dredged up enough courage to ask, ‘Will he come himself?’

  I don’t think so. He has to stay in Kardiastan. Because of the Mirager’s sword…and the babies. You know.

  Of course. His father could never leave, not when he and Ligea were the only people who could bestow cabochons on newborns.

  Arrant looked down at the wooden sword he was wearing, a practice weapon his father had given him. One day he would be asked to make the cabochons for all the future generations of Magor. Arrant the useless. Arrant who couldn’t control his power. How could he ever be the Mirager of Kardiastan?

  He remembered the concern in his mother’s eyes when she spoke of his difficulties. He remembered his father’s rejection. His stomach knotted. He swallowed back a horrid taste in his mouth.

  He drew the wooden sword from its scabbard, turned it over and over in his hands, bitter tears in his eyes. His father had a Mirager’s sword. So did his mother. Two people with the ruler’s blade for the first time in history. And he was their son. He should have been the best Mirager-heir ever born.

  He grunted in angry frustration, drew back his arm and hurled the sword away. Not into the exercise yard below, but over the outer wall of the watchtower, as far as he could throw it, as if he could fling his rage with it. He watched it fall, growing smaller and smaller, spinning as it went, until it bounced onto the rocks and shattered in the ravine beneath the walls of the Stronghold.

  ‘I will never be the Mirager,’ he said. ‘Never.’

  Tarran did not answer, but his love enfolded as he attempted to fill in the cracks in an aching heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘That’s funny,’ Jorbrus said, frowning. ‘Isn’t that one of the quarry horses? And it’s not hobbled.’

  The five of them—Arrant, Narjemah, Jorbrus and his two grown-up sons, Tarkis and Remolis—had just rounded a bend in the final gorge that led to Prianus. They were still a mile or two from the resettled village and marble quarry, and the horse that had caught Jorbrus’ eye was cropping the grass struggling to grow among the stones along the valley bottom.

  ‘Damn careless,’ Jorbrus muttered. His breath was sour with stale wine and his temper uncertain; everyone knew he drank too much. He and his sons had been up at the Stronghold to deliver supplies from First Farm, and were now on their way down again, leading the pack ponies. Narjemah and Arrant had taken the opportunity to descend to Prianus to spend a few days in the village. Narjemah wanted to see her friends; Arrant wanted to play with the village boys. Last time he’d seen them, they’d made plans to hunt for caves in the cliffs behind the quarries…

  ‘What in all Acheron have those careless fellows been up to? Here,’ Jorbrus said to Arrant, handing him some twine from his pack, ‘tie that to the bridle and you can lead the beast back to the village.’

  Arrant obliged, happy to have something useful to do. It was a lot better than knowing himself to be as pointless as grain husks winnowed away on the wind.

  As they rode on, he thought about that. Ligea had returned twice that year, just to see him. She was fighting a war, and yet she still felt she had to baby him, even though he had turned eight. So didn’t that mean he was not only of no help to her cause, but was actually a hindrance?

  He shifted uneasily, feeling guilty. He knew she and Gevenan
were now based in Petrum, one hundred and fifty miles to the south of Prianus. Since the start of the rebellion, she and Gev had secured a grasp on the north and were now attacking Getria. She had done all that in two years, and all he had done was grow taller, like a weed.

  He sighed and decided to think about something else. Would she, he wondered, be mad with the people from Prianus, like Jorbrus, for moving back to the village? They felt safe now that her army was so close, but he knew Ligea still worried about the Jackals. ‘I’ve heard whispers,’ she’d said to him and Foran on her last visit, ‘rumours, really, that Rathrox knows my true identity. If that’s true, he and Favonius have added incentive to find me. They will move these mountains stone by stone until they find me.’

  He glanced across at Jorbrus and his sons. They joked as they rode; to them life seemed good. Remolis had his pet ferret with him, and every now and then it would poke its head out of the saddlebag to look around, as if it knew it was almost home. Even Narjemah, who hated horses in general and having to ride them in particular, began to look more cheerful as they entered the final defile leading to the first of the houses. Smoke wisped upwards from the village around the bend ahead.

  ‘Hey, look, the water pipe’s been knocked down!’ Remolis pointed to where the wooden channel, which brought water into the village from the stream, had fallen off its trestle. Water had flooded the ground and the path was a soggy patch of black mud and stones.

  ‘Maybe the horse did it?’ Arrant suggested.

  ‘Odd that no one’s been to fix it,’ Jorbrus said. They all reined in, staring at the gush of water. The harsh cry of an eagle split the air. Arrant looked up. Scavengers wheeled, wingtip feathers splayed, the watchfulness of their circling an eloquent expression of desolation and death.

  ‘Oh, gods,’ Jorbrus breathed. He kicked his horse into explosive action even as he drew his sword. His sons dropped the leads to the pack animals and raced after him, the hooves of their mounts sending the mud flying.

  Arrant looked across at Narjemah and felt her fears as tense as thread about to snap.‘Don’t go,’ she said, her voice full of dread and urgency. ‘Wait—’

  But he was already digging his heels into his pony’s flanks. She cursed him and followed.

  Around the corner, he found what he did not want to know.

  Nothing was left of the stone huts of Prianus except blackened walls. They stank of smoke and ash and charred meat. His gaze fell to a stinking body sprawled out of the nearest doorway. A woman, her skirt rucked high so he could not see her face.

  He didn’t understand. His mind wouldn’t catch up with all that his eyes told him. Why was her flesh so— so green? She was naked from the waist down, skin taut over her bloated belly. Flies swarmed and crawled, blackening the congealed blood between her legs.

  His gaze wandered on in shock, to a scattering of children’s naked corpses strewn down the middle of the street. Bellies as round as pregnant sows, limbs rigid and hard and black, starkly thrust up into the air like dead branches…Crows rose in flight, cawing their warnings, sated on flesh. And then, further on, more dead. He stared, bewildered, trying to equate the grotesque postures of these bodies with people he had known. With people who had such a short time ago been alive.

  Jorbrus, in stricken silence, knelt beside the body of a toddler. There were cuts all over her chest and limbs, as regular as the border pattern of a mosaic floor. Arrant looked away, desperate not to see, but heard the man’s whisper anyway: ‘Tortured. They tortured the children.’ Tarkis started wailing, a sharp keening to rival the cry of the scavengers. And then Jorbrus scrambled up and ran from house to house, from body to body. They’d had family in Prianus.

  Arrant sat on his pony, unable to move. Terrified. Sick with dread. Please let this not be true. His hands spasmed around the reins, nails digging into his palms. People he knew. Children who had played with him while they were living in the Stronghold or at First Farm. His friends. He didn’t want to dismount. He didn’t want to see, or hear, or smell. He didn’t want to have the knowledge that was there, clawing at his skull: the reason why. But he knew it anyway. The children had been made to suffer, they’d been tortured in front of their parents—to persuade someone to act as a guide through the labyrinth of defiles and gorges to the Stronghold.

  ‘Arrant,’ Narjemah said gently. Tears, melted memories of the dead, coursed down her cheeks.‘Come away. There is nothing here we want to see. Nothing.’

  Tarran! he cried. Help me!

  And Tarran came. He saw the village through Arrant’s eyes, and grieved with him, wrapping him in the only thing he had to give: his love. But not even Tarran could take away the etched pictures, the stink in his nostrils, the burning acid of the memory. Arrant slid off his pony and vomited.

  How could anyone do this? Tarran asked. This—this is Ravage-vile.

  The Ravage didn’t do this. This was men.

  ‘The Jackals did it.’

  The voice was unexpected: high-pitched with shock and pain. Arrant’s head whipped around, to see one of the village boys, Nagus, Jorbrus’s fourteen-year-old nephew, staggering towards them past the ironmaker’s.

  Arrant had never liked Nagus. He took malicious delight in teasing the smaller children, making fun of them with the nastiness of his clever tongue. But as the older boy stood there trembling, eyes wild and wounded, Arrant’s pity for him tumbled out. There, on the doorstep, was the body of Nagus’ little brother. Someone had slashed open his chest and taken out his heart. They’d laid it there on the doorstep for Nagus to find. His heart.

  Jorbrus—tough, whiskered Jorbrus, who swore all the time and was drunk three days in every four—took the lad into his embrace and rocked him.

  ‘Arrant,’ Narjemah said quietly, ‘our horses do not like this. Let’s get them out of the village, eh?’

  Obediently he went back to his mount and took up the reins. The animal—a Quyriot pony—did not appear to be upset, but he led it out of the village anyway, glad to have an excuse to leave the smell of death behind. Yet his unease did not leave him. Horror permeated the air, overwhelming him. He glanced down at his cabochon; it glowed gold.

  ‘Go and round up those pack animals and tie them up,’ Narjemah ordered. He felt her emotions, too: her quiet despair welling up from some deep inner place, a more desperate grief for dead friends, her concern for him. For once, he wished his cabochon did not work. He didn’t want to feel all this.

  Block it out, Tarran suggested.

  As he started to round up the horses, he tried to do as Tarran suggested. It was surprisingly easy. Narjemah, Jorbrus, Tarkis, Remolis, Nagus: one by one he banished their feelings from his mind. Yet when the last of those unwanted emotions vanished, he realised they had not been all there was.

  Other people. People he didn’t know. Two of them. Feelings of intense interest, of anticipation. Something hard and nasty.

  Tarran? Who—?

  I can only feel what you do, his brother said. I dunno who they are. That’s your Magori power speaking to you.

  Arrant tied up the string of pack animals and returned to Narjemah, his stomach churning. ‘There’s someone out there,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, looking at him sharply.

  ‘There’s someone there. Not one of us. Someone I don’t know. No, not one person. Two people. They’re not—not good people. They’re hidden, watching us.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere behind the quarry.’ He wanted to point, but she grabbed his hand and stopped him in time. He said instead, careful this time not to look in the direction he meant, ‘Up there, overlooking the village.’

  ‘Do they mean us harm?’

  ‘I—I don’t think so.’

  She frowned, thinking. ‘The men who did this—they must have left someone behind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To follow whoever came here. They hope we’ll lead them to the Stronghold. Fools. They underestimate the Magor. I’ll tel
l Jorbrus. Don’t worry, Arrant, he will deal with it.’ She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good lad. Your powers work just when they should, it seems.’

  He should have felt pride; instead, he shuddered.

  ‘We never t-told,’ Nagus stuttered some time later, as they all gathered together again, away from the houses, away from the stench of the dead. They had to coax him into speaking. He’d been hiding in the ruins of a house, living with the stink of his own family’s dead in his nostrils for two days, afraid to move. ‘We couldn’t. None of us know the way. Them that did wasn’t here—Brianus and Tomasi and all them were down south selling a shipment of marble. Gessi and Mariam and her sons had gone to First Farm to help with the pickling. They’re not due back till t’morrow. And you was up in the Stronghold. None of us knew, Uncle! We would of done. We would of said it all. We would of told ’em everything. But we couldn’t…and so they—they—’ But he couldn’t go on. And those from the Stronghold didn’t want to hear.

  ‘Why did they leave you alive?’ Tarkis asked. There was accusation in his anguish.

  Nagus turned his face away. ‘They wanted me to give a message,’ he mumbled. ‘To the Domina, only they called her someone else. They made me learn it. They said, “Tell Ligea Gayed that Favonius Kyranon of the Jackals remembers what happened to the Stalwarts in Kardiastan.”’

  ‘Merciful soul,’ Narjemah whispered. ‘They know.’

  It was the second time Arrant had heard the name of that particular legionnaire. Do you remember what she did to the Stalwarts in Kardiastan? he asked Tarran.

  Yes, his brother replied, of course. We were there. She made them turn back after they invaded, and many of them died. But she saved the Mirage. Favonius was a tribune and he worked out she was to blame. He was so angry. He was all coiled up inside, like a snake wanting to strike, full of venom. We didn’t like him. His hatred was like a—a dark patch in his middle. When people have that feeling inside, they hurt.