Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

He grinned at me. T hope you won't.'

'Then maybe you could negotiate. Have the Magor swear allegiance to the Exaltarch in exchange for making Kardiastan slave-free. Kardi slaves are not popular in Tyr, I do know that. It would be no great

loss to the Exaltarchy, and they would save on the number of legionnaires they have to have quartered here.'

He raised an eyebrow. 'Is that your idea, or the Legata's?'

'I believe she was going to mention something along those lines to the Governor. She could arrange it.' Perhaps.

'You don't understand,' he said. 'How could you? You weren't brought up here! This is our land, Derya. Ours! It doesn't belong to Bator Korbus and his legions. It is our right to govern ourselves. To be free. To decide what sort of buildings to have, what sort of law, what sort of punishment for wrongdoers. To decide how to educate our children, and what language they should learn.'

I tightened my hold on the blanket over my shoulders, trying to keep out the cold. 'But hasn't Tyrans brought you many advantages? The Tyranian road system, for example.'

'Built with the blood and sweat of Kardi slaves.'

'The theatres. The stadia. The games. The schools. The baths. The libraries. I've seen all these things in Sandmurram and Madrinya. There would be more, if there was peace here.' I heard a hint of desperation in my voice, and wondered at myself.

'All built with slave labour, on the Tyranian model. The theatres perform works that have nothing to do with us, in a language which is not our own, playing music that is not ours. The games encourage a competitive culture foreign to us. The schools would teach our children to be Tyranian, if they could. They certainly try. Bathing naked in public and lying about afterwards being pandered to by a bevy of slaves – or even servants – is not our custom. And the libraries

don't contain works written by us. In fact, if any book or scroll written in Kardi is ever found, it is destroyed. We have lost our literature by the promulgation of Tyranian law, Derya. So much has been taken from us – can't you understand that? Because if you can't, then you ought to return to Tyrans. All we want is to be left alone to rule ourselves. To be equal to Tyrans, not subjugated to it. Why is that too much to ask?'

'And yet, from what Garis and others have told me, the ordinary Kardi never did rule. Ruling was the prerogative of the Magor.' That's right, Ligea. Slide the knife in, right where it hurts.

He was silent for a moment. I glanced across at him, and he was staring straight ahead, his face grim. He didn't like the implied criticism. 'Yes,' he said. 'That's correct. And I'm not going to apologise for it. We at least are Kardi. We speak the same language, and live by the same code. We have special abilities that make us eminently suited to rule. And we ourselves are governed by laws of service to all.'

'That last is exactly what Legata Ligea would say about the Tyranian authorities.'

He almost spat his contempt. 'Can you really believe we have anything in common with their methods of governance and commerce? You've lived in Tyr! You've seen what happens there, surely.'

'Yes,' I said. 'And I know what slavery is.'

He was instantly contrite. 'Ah, by the Mirage, I'm sorry. Of course you do. Better by far than I.' He looked at me then, and smiled his apology. 'You are right to question, for only by questioning can we learn. You have come far for someone who was brought up a slave.'

Something unpleasant crawled across my skin to nibble at my soul. My own lies, perhaps, so cleverly

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worded to be sure he wouldn't sense the falsehoods. I said, 'Don't think of me as someone who emptied the chamberpots or scrubbed the dishpans. Ligea took her slave with her everywhere – to school as a child, and then later to the theatre and the debates and the poetry evenings. Her slave learned along with her.' True enough, although the slave had been Brand. I hoped Temellin would believe it of Derya.

He stopped and stared at me. Almost immediately, the ice beneath his mount began to melt, and the sands stirred. I halted alongside, wondering just what part of my statement had put that peculiar expression on his face. 'I've been a fool,' he said quietly. 'You have been her companion all your remembered life. You love her, don't you? She is as an older sister to you. You don't want to betray her.'

'Slaves don't find it so hard to betray their owners,' I said woodenly. My mount shuffled uneasily as sand grains bubbled around its feet.

'Nonetheless. If you had to choose between the two of us, Ligea or me, who would it be?'

'I already have chosen.'

'No. You chose between freedom and slavery.'

'I would not willingly see anything happen to Ligea. But then – I wouldn't want anything to happen to you, either.' And that was true enough. Derya had vanquished Ligea in that particular battle.

He nodded, accepting I could go no further than that, and we continued on.

Brand and I looked upon the Mirage and did not believe what we saw.

'It is not real,' I said flatly. 'How can anything like this be real?'

'You are right,' Temellin replied. 'In one sense it is not real. Why else would it be called the Mirage? What is a mirage if not an illusion, a dream that is not there?'

'I don't understand.'

Temellin signalled Garis to ride on with Brand, leaving the two of us mounted on our shleths looking out over a landscape that could not exist. He reached across and took my hand. 'It is the creation of entities we call the Mirage Makers. They have made a land including everything that pleases them, and because they are who they are, what they create has reality. I can eat the fruit and be sustained, drink the water and have my thirst slaked. But if the Mirage Makers decide they want a change, then the lake you see here today will be gone tomorrow; the leaves that are purple now might be white in an hour's time, the road that runs across this valley may not exist two seconds hence – or it may last a thousand years. If they want music,

there will be music; if they want silence, they will have it. As a matter of courtesy, they do not usually remove the buildings from around us without warning, nor do they banish a chair that's in use, nor do they build a wall across a road just as we ride down it.'

I remembered the shapes I'd thought I had seen in the. dancing sands. 'These entities – where do they live?'

'They are the Mirage, all that you see before you now. It is impossible to think of them as being creatures like us, Derya. They have none of our limitations, none of our frailties. They do not need a form to move, nor sustenance to survive, nor a mouth to speak, nor eyes to see. They do not give birth or die, they just are. They are as much found in every grain of the soil beneath us as they are found in every leaf of that tree over there, or every stone in that wall, in every feather of that bird you see.'

He spoke almost as if I weren't there, with a lyricism that spoke of his deep love for this place, the orator coming to the fore again. He continued, 'To our Kardi forebears, the Mirage Makers were enemies to be feared because they were so far beyond ordinary Kardis, so unknowable. In those days patches of the Mirage were found throughout Kardiastan. Those places were dangerous. The Mirage could kill us, and did, without even noticing we were gone. And then the first of the Magor was born. She passed on her skills to her children and her children's children. They were also mirage makers of a kind, people with the power to make what did not exist seem to have reality. Probably you and I also have that latent ability, although we do not know how to use it.

'The illusions our forebears made had none of the – the solidness of the Mirage you see around you, but