Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

'Yes.' The word jerked out. I felt I was physically incapable of giving any other answer.

He nodded and leant forward to brush his lips against my forehead. 'Warn Brand that if he thinks to leave the Mirage before he has gained my trust, I will kill him before he reaches the edge of the Shiver Barrens as surely as the sun rises. As I would anyone who would betray Kardiastan to Tyrans. And now we will set up camp here for the remainder of the day. We

will move only after sunset. We must rest; it will be a ¦' long ride tonight.' He turned away, calling to Garis,

giving orders, smiling his friendship and goodwill.

I wondered what had happened to his laughter while he had been speaking to me.

I went over to Brand and gave him Temellin's warning.

'Charming fellow,' he said. 'And how long have you been bedding this scorpion, my sweet?'

I bristled. 'The slaking of my appetite is no business of yours, Brand.'

'No, more's the pity. But remember, scorpions have stings in the tail. It doesn't pay to play with them.' He grinned at me, but there was little humour in it.

I tried to sleep under the makeshift shelter they erected, but the heat was so intense it seemed to shrivel me, making my skin too small for my body, squeezing me into too small a space. The rock beneath my sleeping pelt seared as if I were meat basting over a fire. And the music from the Shiver Barrens teased, promising something just beyond my understanding. I still felt that if I could only concentrate, I would be able to comprehend the words and arrive at some eternal truth… but I could never quite hear. I rolled over to watch the dance, the endless movement that was colour and sound as well, and was again a moth fascinated by a flame. Could such beauty be deadly? I felt I could walk into the dance, be part of its glory – and emerge unscathed. Yet Temellin could not have been lying; I would have known. And the legionnaires who had set out to cross the sands had never returned.

Gradually the dancing slowed, as if the grains grew too heavy for the air, sinking lower and lower until their movement was stilled and the ground was quiet and purple under the last rays of the sun.

I slept.

When I awoke, the ground sparkled with frost. Once the warmth of the day was gone, no longer enticing the sand to dance, the Barrens were calm and virginal, a white-clad bride breathlessly awaiting the sweet violation of the wedding night.

Temellin and Garis were dismantling the camp. Brand passed food to me and I ate hurriedly, infected by the eagerness of the others to be away. 'Why didn't we start to cross at sunset?' I asked Temellin. 'We'd have had more time.'

'There are patches of quicksand out there. Ride over one of those and our mounts would flounder and sink. We'd be mired. And once again the Barrens would have claimed the unwary. The ground has to be hard for us to cross.'

I understood then. We'd had to wait, wait until the temperature fell to freezing as it did each night under those cloudless Kardi skies. Until the sand grains were bound together with the sparkle of desert dew frost; until the ground was frozen beneath the feet of a mount.

Only then could we start our journey.

I rode with Temellin beside me, Garis and Brand and the pack shleth dropping away behind, each of us careful to make our own path across the crust. To have followed the tracks of another would have been to risk breaking through the surface. If I looked back, I could see the pawprints the shleths left behind, but when I looked ahead, Temellin and I could have been the only people ever to have crossed the Shiver Barrens, ever to have made a mark on that virgin white.

As we rode, I realised why a horse or a gorclak could never have made that journey and lived. Their small feet would have broken through the surface. Only a

shleth could cross the Shiver Barrens. They spread out their pads to the size of serving plates and used a fast-walking gait that spread their weight evenly on three legs at a time. The constancy of the speed they maintained was impressive; a glance at the concentration on Temellin's face convinced me it was necessary. If we didn't reach the other side of the Barrens by dawn, we died..«• r

We rode in silence. Temellin travelled in a world of his own as if he listened to voices only he could hear, yet I did not regret the lack of conversation. I, too, wanted to listen. I wanted to listen to the song of my own body, to the sound of the footbeats of my mount, to the now-stilled music of the sands, echoes of which I still seemed to hear. Above, the purple softness of the sky with its blue points of light and swirls of Stardust; below, the sparkle of blue-frost and the crisp crunch of paws… No, there was no need of words. I was beyond them.

We had no time for rest. Safety was a night's ride away; the pace had to be steady and relentless. Occasionally Temellin would draw his sword and swing it in an arc in front of him. Each time, when it flamed briefly, he would make a slight adjustment to the direction of our ride.

When we passed a dozen silent frost-covered figures, half buried in the sand, half exposed in a naked tatter of bone and desiccated flesh, we did not stop. Temellin did not seem to notice them, but my, heart clenched painfully as recognition came. There could be no mistaking the lance still clutched in a fleshless hand, the clasp from a military cloak lodged in leathered skin, or the metal links caught on the white curve of ribs, gleaming in the starlight – all that remained of a cuirass. And beyond the men, the

skeletal remains of animals with pitted and pockmarked horns in the middle of bone-white skulls. Appalled, I averted my eyes.

In predawn light I had my first glimpse of the end of the Shiver Barrens: a dark silhouette across the horizon ahead, a continuous jagged line of a low ridge against the mauve of sky. Temellin spoke for the first time. 'That's the first Rake,' he said. 'That's safety.'

Dawn came: a shaft of light that shot across the plain from behind, sending our shadows racing ahead to touch the stone of the Rake, now coloured the ebony-red of newly shed blood. The shleths quickened pace, aware time was slipping away from them with the darkness.

'Don't worry,' Temellin said from beside me. 'We will make it.'

But soon I was doubting his words of reassurance. The crispness was gone from beneath the paws of our mounts. They were forced to slow as the crust broke slightly each time a foot landed. A little later, when I looked behind, I saw sand escaping from the confining surface wherever the crust had cracked. The grains weren't truly dancing as yet; the sand bubbled, broke and fell back only to bubble and burst again. Ahead, the white plain was white no longer; the frost had melted.

'Temellin -' I began. Fear and excitement mingled. I knew my eyes shone.

'Trust me.' He laughed and let loose his emotions. He was exhilarated, revelling in the race against time, the possibility of death, the joy he anticipated. 'I'll get you there. Believe me, there's no way I'll be cheated out of what I intend to have today.'

Yet by the time the Rake was within reach, the soft sound of the song of the Shiver Barrens murmured

›¦-¦-«_ ":m

anew. The shleths were floundering, almost wallowing as the grains rose up to batter at their legs. On their last desperate run to the rock ahead, they even unfolded their feeding arms and used the balled fingers as an extra pair of feet, anything to give them added purchase on the restless sand. Behind, our tracks were a ploughed furrow through a barren field.

And then we were safe. The rock was beneath us and our mounts halted, heads hanging low with fatigue.

Garis whooped and laughed. 'Wow – that was terrific!'

Brand shook his head and muttered something about youth and idiocy.