Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

'It's the Ravage. It hates me!' The words sounded ridiculous as soon as I gave voice to them.

'Oh.' He sighed and nodded. 'Yes, I know. I mean, it hates everyone. We've got used to it, I suppose. Try not to let it worry you; if you don't go near it, nothing can happen to you.'

'Let's get out of here,' I said. 'I – I don't like it.' I slapped my heels into my mount, desperate to leave that corrosive loathing.

A littie later on, once we'd left the Ravage behind and had slowed to a walk once more, I asked Temellin if, when the Magor were free to live in Kardiastan again, they would leave the Mirage.

He nodded. 'Oh yes. This has never been more than a temporary haven; it does not belong to us. I am sure it was never part of my uncle's bargain with the

Mirage Makers that our stay be permanent.' He glanced at me, his look soft, and I felt an answering surge of emotion. It occurred to me I had come to know Temellin surprisingly well in a short time. I knew how much pain he concealed behind that cheerful exterior of his; I sensed how much inner uncertainty, how much anger at injustice, there was inside him. One part of me wanted to help carry that load. Appalled, I tried to remember yet again that I had a duty to destroy him.

Neither thought brought me any joy.

A moment later, Temellin said, 'Look – the Mirage City is in sight.'

He was pointing, and I saw the buildings rising out of the plain like a pile of ill-stacked bowls and mugs. They leant against one another, occasionally meeting overhead, sometimes held apart by crooked covered bridges or walkways. It was a city of narrow curved streets and winding stairs, of back alleys that dipped and humped like loop caterpillars. The stonework of the walls bulged with eccentric lumps and nodules or was pitted with niches and hollows planted with ferns and flowers. There was no symmetry, no planning. It had the unexpectedness of nature.

'However do you find your way anywhere?' I asked later, as we wended our way into this mess of streets and drunken buildings.

'With luck, more than anything,' he said with a grin. 'And don't forget, things can change overnight. A straight street can suddenly develop as many corners as joints on a shleth feeding arm, or a main road can become a stream. There was one awful week when we had to go everywhere by boat on canals; luckily the Mirage Makers tired of that change fairly quickly.'

"Where are you taking me?'

'All the Magoroth live in one building we call the Maze, for want of a better name. It contains any number of apartments, as well as servant quarters, nurseries – everything we need. We'll find a place for you for the time being. Korden and Pinar will demand both you and Brand be under supervision, I'm afraid.'

I reined in my mount. 'Will I – will I see you at all?' It was an act. A touch of pleading, to show my trustworthiness. To give him a hint that perhaps Derya was falling in love with him. And yet, it was also not entirely a deception. Even as I spoke the words, I knew I wanted to see him again. Vortex, I thought, why the Goddess is he so blamed attractive?

He stopped alongside me. 'I – cabochon help me, Derya – I don't think I can stay away. But I have promised Pinar she wouldn't have to wait much longer; she is almost thirty-five. If she is to have children, we ought to get together soon and she wants marriage.'

His face was so drawn, his voice so stressed, I couldn't bear to look at him. I knew, without him saying it, that once married he would be faithful to his wife, no matter that she was a murderous bitch. I said, 'Perhaps it would be better if you and I did not live in the same building.'

'Perhaps – later. Not now, not yet. Please, Derya, not yet.'

'It is not a weakness to feel this way,' I told him, nettled by the shame I sensed in him.

'No. No, to feel this way is wondrous. But to give into it? It will hurt Pinar, it will anger Korden and some of the others. And yet I can't help myself.'I don't even want to try.'

I heard his ache and shuddered, hurting. The huntress shouldn't love the prey.

Such a love disarms you.

We were cheered as we rode towards the Maze. People poured out of the houses, welcoming their Mirager, clapping and waving and smiling. Far from accepting the adulation as his due, Temellin appeared profoundly moved and not a little embarrassed. Yet there was a natural regality about him too. He unsheathed his sword and raised it over his head for everyone to see, and the cheering redoubled. There were tears in his eyes as we rode into the courtyard of the Maze.

He was busy then, greeting people, organising, talking. He asked Garis to look after me, and Brand as well, which the youth was happy enough to do. It was Garis who led us into the building, saying, 'You won't see much of Temellin in the next few days, Derya. Now that he has his sword back,' he glanced at Brand and lowered his voice, 'he has to attend to some babies.'

He was being indiscreet, to say the least, reminding me that he was little more than a youth, capable of a rash lack of caution when he wanted to impress. However, I was too preoccupied to think about what he said. I was trying to make sense of the building and its furnishings, a difficult task when there was so much absurdity.

'A drunken architect?' Brand suggested.

'And a blind mason as well, I think,' I said. Stairways ended in blank walls, passages led nowhere, bridges were strung across the top of tall rooms. Some rooms had no furniture, while in others even the wooden chairs were so solid it would have taken four strong men to lift just one. I saw empty bookshelves floating in the air, and fires that burned without consuming anything – in fireplaces built of anything from fish skeletons to blacksmiths' hammers.

There were plenty of people about: ordinary Kardis to undertake all the menial chores, as well as Magor of all ranks. And underfoot, everywhere, Magoroth children, laughing, playing or being marched to lessons by their Magor tutors. One passageway we passed along had an intricate game of hopsquares chalked out on the floor, although no one was using it just then.

At first the informality grated on me. This was the building that housed the man who claimed to be the rightful ruler of all Kardiastan; why then did it have more of the atmosphere of a country market fair than a monarch's residence? I thought of the Exaltarch's ' palace in Tyr, with its rich ornamentation, its uniformed guards everywhere, its rigid rules of etiquette and protocol, all more appropriate for a ruler than this cheerful informality. And then I remembered, guiltily, that I'd found those marbled rooms in Tyr stifling. In fact, I had hated the palace. I'd hated the coldness of the atmosphere, the faint touch of unease pervading it like an invisible mist – the residue left by absolute power. I'd hated bending my knees to Bator Korbus and touching the hem of his robe.

Confound it, my thoughts were as muddled as my emotions. I couldn't even be sure what I believed in any more. I was surrounded by too much that was bizarre. And I'd had insufficient time to consider all I had learned from my contact with the Mirage Makers.

After a confusing ten-minute walk, Garis found a room for Brand close to his own and another for me. 'The Mirager's apartments are just down that flight of steps,' he whispered, pointing. In ten minutes more he'd produced a maid for me, had a meal sent up, arranged for hot water for a bath and procured me some clean clothes. Then he left.

WK With infinite relief, I removed my sandals, reflecting I would never be able to accustom myself to wearing shoes inside a building. I still found the whole idea of tramping the outside dirt into one's living quarters disgusting.:::..

An hour later, having bathed and eaten and changed, I lay down to rest.