The Shadow of Tyr

by Glenda Larke

  He was Magor! No, more than that. He was Magoroth.

  ‘Did you know,’ he added quietly, ‘that you’ve been searing my brains with your emotions for hours? A pretty dance you’ve led me, lad! And now when I do find you, you seem to be contemplating putting an end to all your troubles by jumping into the River Tyr.’

  He came towards Arrant and looked over the balustrade at the blackness below. ‘Quite frankly, I wouldn’t advise it. That water’s filthy. It’s so thick with rubbish, you wouldn’t sink and think of what a fool you’d look then.’ He gave a crooked grin. ‘Besides, you’d probably end up dying six months hence of some quite dreadful skin disease as a result of your dip, just when you’d decided life was worth living after all.’

  Arrant tried to smile. ‘I’d sort of decided not to anyway.’

  The man nodded. ‘Yes, I guessed you might have. You actually stopped totally scrambling my brains a little while back. Do you know what a mess you look? Your hair has been singed like a boar made ready for roasting. Your eyebrows are all frizzy. Your hands have been burned. They must hurt. In fact, you look as if you could do with some home comforts.’

  Arrant shrugged indifferently. ‘I’m fine.’ I deserve the pain…

  ‘Hmm.’ He seemed unconvinced. ‘I gather, from that, you don’t want to go home.’

  Arrant shook his head and shuddered. ‘Not—not yet.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I don’t have a place to take you, because I only arrived this morning, aboard a Kardi coastal trader. I was intending to go straight to the palace. Nothing like a bit of luxury after a couple of weeks crammed into a ship with a cargo of freshly tanned shleth pelts. Tell you what we’ll do, Arrant; we’ll take a room in an inn. No, that’s not what they call them here, is it? Taberna, that’s right—we’ll take a room in a taberna. I noticed one back along the street towards the port. Then you can clean up a bit. I’ll scrounge some clean clothes for you as well, if you don’t mind wearing a Kardi outfit. I’m short and you’re tall for your age—we may be able to fix something up.’

  ‘I—I think that sounds like a good idea,’ Arrant said, struggling with the bleakness in his head. With the desire to sit down and do nothing except be swamped with misery. ‘How—how do you know who I am?’

  ‘You have the look of your mother. Besides, there’s not all that many thirteen-year-old Magoroth lads gadding about Tyr. One tends to have heard of the one there is.’

  ‘You know my mother?’

  ‘Once upon a time. In fact, when I was a youth not that much older than you are now, I was even a little in love with her, in a worshipful sort of way. And your father is a close friend.’

  ‘He sent you to fetch me,’ Arrant said flatly, guessing. He had wanted it so long; why now did he feel nothing?

  ‘Yes. My name’s Garis.’

  Arrant’s insides skidded sickly. ‘Ligea’s mentioned you.’

  ‘I should hope so. We have shared much, Sarana and I, good and bad.’ He put his hand lightly on Arrant’s shoulder and guided him off the bridge. ‘This way.’

  They walked in silence. Garis didn’t volunteer anything, and Arrant didn’t ask anything. Half an hour later, he was sitting in a rented room, washed and dressed in clean clothes, staring listlessly at the food Garis had ordered for them from the kitchens.

  ‘Can’t eat anything?’ Garis asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘I think we’d better talk. Maybe you could start with telling me why it is that, when I mentioned my name, you reacted as if I’d pronounced a sentence of death on you? I’m not really such a bad sort of fellow, you know. I don’t beat my servants, starve my shleths or even kick other people’s brats. So what’s wrong?’

  Misery welled up in Arrant, black and threatening. ‘You were a friend of Brand’s,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. He’s probably the best friend I’ve got.’

  ‘He’s dead. I killed him. And almost killed my mother too.’

  Garis sat motionless for a moment, trying to contain his shock. All Arrant’s sensing powers had dissipated, but he didn’t need them anyway. He could see Garis’ reaction. The man was biting his bottom lip, hard. His hands were coiled fists on his knees. ‘But she’s all right?’ he asked.

  Arrant nodded miserably. ‘Wounded. And weak. But she was regaining strength when I left her.’

  ‘I think you’d better tell me everything.’

  Arrant hesitated. A wave of nausea had him fighting not to heave up the contents of his stomach.

  ‘You need help,’ Garis told him. ‘If I know what happened, I will help, I promise you. No matter what you did.’

  And so Arrant began the whole sorry story. He stumbled and repeated himself; jumped from one thing to another, then had to backtrack to make it all clear. He didn’t mention Tarran, and although he said he was jealous of Brand, he avoided saying exactly why. Garis listened carefully, only occasionally asking a question to clarify something.

  When he’d finished, Garis said quietly, ‘That’s a heavy burden to learn to live with, Arrant. You will have to have courage. And you’re too hard on yourself, as well. You did something stupid, and you were prompted by ignoble motives, but there are very few people who haven’t done something equally stupid and sordid at some time in their lives. Most are just lucky that nothing terrible comes of it.’ He fiddled with the wineskin he had in his hand. ‘Like you, I am also one of the unlucky ones. I was responsible for the death of my wife and my unborn child because I did something foolish. I have to live without her always, my first child has no mother, my second child was never born—and my wife has no life at all. You’re not alone, although I don’t suppose that is any comfort to you right now.’ The pain of his remembering hung in the air between them.

  ‘How—how do you bear it?’ How will I bear this?

  ‘You live one grain of sand through the hourglass at a time. One grain, and then the next, and the next, and the next. Until an hour has passed. And then you live the next hour, and the next, and the next. And then you find you have lived the first day. That’s how you do it, Arrant. One grain of sand at a time.’ He sighed. ‘Mostly you learn to accept that what’s done cannot be altered. My wife died years ago. Is it still painful? Oh, yes. Some things will pain you for the rest of your life. But you learn to live with them. You learn to accept. The pain does grow more bearable with every passing year. The guilt never goes away, but you survive it. And somewhere along the line you’ll even learn to laugh again.’

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Arrant said, ‘I’m sorry. About Brand and you, I mean. You’ve lost a friend, and I’ve just been thinking about myself—’

  Garis wasn’t about to denigrate his regard for Brand just to lessen Arrant’s pain. He said simply, ‘He was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. We didn’t just know each other back in Kardiastan before you were born, you know. We travelled together throughout the old Exaltarchy. Plotted rebellion together to free the vassal states and the provinces. We had many good years. He was the one who pulled me together after my Tavia died. I’ll grieve for him. I’ll miss him.’

  Arrant started to cry, terrible racking sobs that came from a place too deep to have a name. Garis pulled his head down onto his shoulder and held him tight. He said, ‘Brand liked you, Arrant, and I’d back Brand’s judgement in a thing like that any day. Don’t be too hard on yourself.’

  The sobbing should have been cathartic, but it wasn’t. It was just another scourge to his back.

  Four days. Brand had been dead four days, and she still couldn’t absorb the reality of the truth: she would never see him again. He wasn’t coming back. She woke each morning, and had to tell herself, all over again, that he was dead. All over again, that sinking feeling would hit the bottom of her stomach. And then the grief would start.

  Not just grief for Brand, but for Arrant. And she couldn’t help him, either. She had no words to assuage such pain, not hers, not his.

  Goddess be thanked
Garis had arrived when he had. Garis, so much older and wiser and saddened than the youth she had once known, but still Garis for all that. Looking after Arrant this time, instead of her. Garis who was going to take her son away…

  She was waiting now to say goodbye. She leaned on the balustrade of the palace loggia and looked out over the city. Her city. The breeze played with her hair, tickled her neck. It ought to be grey, she thought. Or white. But it wasn’t. Underneath the gold highlighting, she still had hair of a Kardi brown.

  Fiercely, she told herself she was glad Arrant was going to Temellin. It was where he should have been all along. It had been a mistake to bring him to Tyrans. And now she was sending home a troubled youth who didn’t know how to be a Magor, a young man who didn’t know his father at all.

  Temellin, she whispered to the wind, it was a mistake, my love, and now you have to set it right…

  She thought she felt Temellin’s presence there, behind her, but when she turned, it was Arrant who faced her. Alone, and so vulnerable. She stepped up to him, took him into her arms and hugged him, but she felt the resistance of his body even as he put his arms about her.

  ‘Your wound?’ he asked.

  She showed him her arm. ‘Fine. Look! You did an excellent job.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘I am going to miss you, more than you could possibly know,’ she said. ‘I wish…I wish I could come with you.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he said, and he wasn’t talking about his departure.

  ‘I know.’ She stood back to look at him, her hands on his shoulders. ‘It—it wasn’t just your fault, Arrant. We all could have played it differently. We just have to live with the decisions we made, and the results. Neither Rathrox nor Favonius would have behaved the way they did, if I had not incurred their anger in the first place. I had the chance to kill both of them, on different occasions, and didn’t do it. I would do anything, anything at all, to change that. But I can’t. And you have suffered for it. Brand died for it.’

  He swallowed. ‘Favonius said he could have been my father…’

  The words were a lance into her heart. Was everything she had ever done going to add to his burden, his pain? ‘No,’ she said vehemently. ‘He couldn’t have been. You are who you are, because you are Temellin’s son.’

  ‘Were you lovers?’ There was no accusation there, just a striving to understand something beyond his comprehension.

  How was it possible to explain her liaison with the man responsible for Prianus?

  The words were so hard to say. ‘Yes. Before I met your father. Favonius wanted to marry me. But in the end I humiliated him, and that he could not live with and still be the man he had been.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes being a man has nothing to do with being a good fighter, or a fine athlete. Sometimes the greatest men are those who know how to live with their adversity, or be courageous in the little things day after day. Brand was a slave. So was Gev. They were both ripped from their homes, badly treated and humiliated on the slave blocks of the Exaltarchy. And they still stood proud. That is what it is to be a man. In the end, Favonius never came close, for all his soldier’s bravery.’

  She drew in a deep breath. ‘These things are difficult to talk about with you, Arrant. And I suppose it is equally embarrassing for you. All this happened before I met Temellin. Be assured of this: I—I have never ceased to love your father, to love him beyond all other men.’

  He nodded, not meeting her eyes. Instead, he dug in his belt pouch. ‘I want to give this back to you,’ he said. ‘I guess I won’t need it any more. I’ll have the real thing.’

  She took what he offered. It was the lump of Mirage Maker clay. In her hand it re-formed once more into Temellin’s head, smiling at her. ‘He looks older,’ she said, and then snorted at the absurdity of her remark. ‘But then, he is. Thank you, Arrant. I—I shall treasure it because it will remind me of you both.’ Oh, Goddess, how can I do without you too?

  She took a deep breath, gathered her courage one last time. ‘There is something else I have to tell you. Several things, in fact. I wish I didn’t have to, but you need to know. Just in case.’

  He looked up at her, the wounded sorrow of his look both an accusation—although doubtless he did not mean it to be—and a plea not to hurt him, not to burden him with more knowledge that was too much to bear. She swallowed and plunged on, hating all she had to say.

  ‘Your troubles with your power. It could be as a result of all the things that I did when I was carrying you. I’ve always blamed myself. It’s not your fault; it was mine. I went to fight the Stalwarts and I fell prey to the Ravage. And then I overused my powers, again and again. I think all that harmed your power.’

  He nodded. ‘Narjemah told me. You should have told me earlier. I always thought it was because I was too stupid, or not trying hard enough, or something.’

  She heard his unspoken words: It hurt. ‘I—I always wanted you to have hope. I thought if you believed it was because of damage done before you were born, you’d give up. And you shouldn’t.’

  ‘So I should go on hoping it will miraculously get better one day? Why are you telling me all this now, then?’

  She winced at his bitterness. ‘Because you need to have all the facts to help you make decisions. There’s something else your father and I did not tell you, about how we met. Your father had lost his Mirager’s sword to the Tyranians. That meant there could be no more cabochons bestowed. He made up his mind to die if he couldn’t find it, so someone else could become the Mirager and be granted a new sword. Fortunately, I was able to return his sword to him.’ She smiled faintly. ‘It’s a long story, and one day I’ll tell the details.’

  ‘What is it you are trying to say?’ He sounded so adult, so composed, but she heard the pain.

  ‘Soon you will walk the Shiver Barrens and be granted your Magor sword. One day—gods grant it a far distant day—you will have to do it a second time in order to swap your Magor sword for a Mirager’s sword. I want you to be very careful about doing so, Arrant, if you haven’t learned by then to control your cabochon and the Magor sword you will have.’

  He regarded her, his head tilted to one side, hearing what she hadn’t said. ‘Because if I can’t make cabochons with my Mirager’s sword, I’d have to kill myself.’

  She nodded and looked away from the bitter shock in his eyes. ‘Yes. It—it would be better that you renounce your position as heir than take up a sword you could not use.’

  ‘I see. I understand.’

  ‘It—it may not come to that.’

  ‘No. It might not.’

  There was an awkward pause, and then they spoke of other things: practicalities, messages, discussions on trade and monetary matters that Temellin needed to be informed about, on wars still being fought in other parts of the old Exaltarchy. She gave him packages to be sent to Kardiastan. Gifts for Aemid and Temellin.

  In Ligea’s ears their conversation sounded so stilted. I’ve lost him, she thought. He sees me now as a woman grieving for her lover, rather than his mother. As a woman who destroyed his future before he was born, because of her ambition. Ah, sweet Melete, we pay a terrible price for love.

  She kissed him on the brow, embraced him once more, and he left. She would see him again before his ship sailed, but this was the last time she would see him alone. She had wanted to tell him so much, and had said so little.

  ‘Nothing much you can say to a boy who’s just had his first brush with adult guilts, is there?’ She jumped, startled. She’d been so wrapped in her thoughts she hadn’t been aware that Gevenan had come up behind her, entering the room through the door Arrant had left open.

  She turned and said, matching his sadness, ‘Oh, Gev, he’s been a grown man these four days past. His childhood is gone.’ And why is that so damned hard for a mother to take?

  He nodded. ‘He will carry that load on his back for the rest of his life. But there are very few good men—or women—who don’t have a pack that’s t
oo weighty to heft at times. That’s what life is.’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘Ocrastes’ balls, listen to me! Gevenan of Inge, spouting philosophy? I must be ill.’

  ‘I would shoulder all of that pack for him if I could.’ She sighed. ‘I guess that’s what mothers are, even this one. I was pretty rotten at the whole parent scenario. I hope his father can do a better job. Goddess, Gev, if I’d known motherhood would be so damnably painful—!’

  He snorted. ‘You wouldn’t have changed a thing.’

  She shook her head, more as an expression of her uncertainty than in negation. ‘If I could go back, I’d change everything,’ she said, and the fervour of her desire surprised even herself. ‘Gev, I told myself I was doing all this for Kardiastan, to keep my nation safe from the Exaltarchy. It wasn’t true, not really. You were right: I did it because I wanted revenge on Rathrox and Bator Korbus. On my father, even though he was already dead. Well, I got my revenge. Rathrox Ligatan and Bator Korbus and Favonius Kyranon—they all died with the bitter knowledge that they had failed and I had won. There can be no greater triumph. And you know what that victory tastes like. You warned me.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Ashes, Gev. Ashes on my tongue. The ashes of those who died. The dead coals of the years I’ve lost to war. The dying embers of lost opportunities. I could have married the man I loved and shared his life and his rule. I could have spent time knowing my son. I could have had other children. And Brand could be alive.

  ‘I threw it all away for vengeance.’ She shook her head again. ‘It wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ he said crossly. ‘Wallowing in self-pity like some broken-hearted adolescent. Brand would say it was worth it—his people are free! He spent years fighting the Exaltarchy because you made it possible for him to do so, by what you did here. He never regretted that, not a moment of it. He risked his life every day to help bring it about! Vortexdamn, if you’d ever bothered to ask that great hulking Altani son of a bitch what was the best way to die, he probably would have said, “Saving Ligea’s life!” Which is exactly what he did do in the end.