Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

I knew my delay in telling Temellin the truth about myself was dangerous. The longer I left the telling of who I was and what I knew, the harder it would be to explain my delay in telling it. It wasn't that the Mirage was in imminent danger from the Stalwarts – it would surely still be several months more before the legions arrived at the edge of the Mirage – but people would wonder at my reluctance to have given the information. How could I explain the truth: that I didn't want Temellin to know of my past? When his eyes were on me, I was ashamed of having been a compeer; the thought he might despise me for what I had been was as unpleasant as his absence from my pallet. And I dreaded the poison Pinar would spread about the Legata Ligea; she might be able to turn Temellin's trust into suspicion and contempt. Nor did I want to betray Favonius and his friends. I had found satisfaction and companionship in Favonius's arms; the thought I might cause his death was lacerating. He didn't deserve my betrayal.

Yet I also knew I must tell; if I didn't, the invasion of the Stalwarts would come as a surprise with inevitably tragic results; if I didn't, sooner or later someone would recognise and name me. Already Aemid might be talking to other Kardis, spreading a

warning about Ligea Gayed. There would be other slaves arriving from Madrinya or Sandmurram who. might know my face…

Unfortunately, with Temellin's deliberate unavailability, it was so easy for me to keep postponing my confession. So easy to rationalise the irrational, to say it would be better to put it off until my fellow Magor had come to know and trust me more. Easy, and stupid.

Perhaps love makes cowards of us all.

It wasn't easy to settle into my new life. I had thought that as a Magoria, as Temellin's sister, I would have a position of power. I was soon disabused of that notion. I was included in the councils, but anything I said was largely disregarded; with the exception of Temellin and a few others, I was considered to be a pseudo-Kardi and therefore untrustworthy. I had returned the Mirager's sword, and taken the oath of the Covenant, yet neither helped. It wasn't hard to see Pinar behind most of the distrust, but I couldn't counterattack without jeopardising my position and hurting Temellin.

Garis defended me every chance he got, even telling the Magoroth how the Mirage Makers had changed the Covenant tablets for me to make them both beautiful and more understandable. He'd thought that would help. Instead, it alarmed those who shared Pinar's distrust, prompting them into pressing for more restrictions on what I was made privy to, or what I was taught. 'We can't rely on the Mirage Makers to protect us against treachery,' they said. "We have to do it ourselves.'

I was humiliated by my powerlessness, but trapped in my own deceit and woefully ignorant of all things Kardi, there wasn't much I could do about it. Temellin

did try. He sensed my affinity for power and something in him recognised and sympathised with my need for challenge, but in the face of Pinar's intransigence and the general prejudice against me, it was hard for him to offer me much.

I was also lonely. I hadn't mastered the art of the two-level conversation the Magor took for granted. They spoke to one another as a matter of course in both words and quick flares of emotions. Sometimes they used words only as signposts, and conducted much of a conversation in cleverly differentiated displays of emotional reaction. They delighted in word plays where something was said, but immediately negated by the accompanying flash of a contrary sentiment, in a form of sardonic wit. In understanding their conversations, I was always a step or two behind, missing the nuances. -

Worse, I was unable to utilise my emotions as speech. Having schooled myself always to hide the way I felt, I found it difficult to use deliberate emotional display in order to give another level of meaning to my words. In the end, the Magoroth spoke to me the way they did to the non-Magoroth: in ordinary speech. They were polite enough, but the end result was a subtle exclusion from their ranks.

The person who kept me from going mad with frustration was Garis. If he did use emotion to speak to me, he slowed it down so that I could understand. He took his duties to me seriously and wanted no misunderstanding between us. He'd come to me in my room immediately after the oath-taking ceremony that first morning and told me it was time for my first lesson. 'We'll start with the art of building wards,' he'd said without preamble. 'Now the first thing you have to be aware of -'

There were two kinds of power available to a wearer of the gold cabochon, I discovered. The first was power that came through the sword, the second was power straight from the cabochon. 'All the most powerful wards are built with the aid of the sword,' he said. 'So these are not available to the two lower ranks of the Magor.' He unsheathed his sword and fitted it into his left palm. 'There's one thing you must never do, and that's put your cabochon into another's sword hilt.'

'Why not?' I asked, guiltily remembering I had done just that with Temellin's weapon.

'Once you have tuned a sword, any sword, to your cabochon, it can never be turned against you, even in the hands of an enemy. Nor can it be used to build a ward you could not break. Of course, none of the Magoroth would turn his sword on another Magor, but to deliberately tune another's sword to your cabochon is to show your distrust of a fellow Magor, and that would be a terrible insult. It is never done.'

'I'll remember that,' I said gravely, and he went on with the lesson. He showed me how to draw a square of protection around myself with sword and conjurations. Inside this, I – and anyone else – would be safe from intrusion. He also showed me how to achieve the converse: to confine a person, or people, within a warded area. 'They are not actually as much use as you'd think,' he warned. 'You can't make them too big, not much larger than this room, in fact. If you did, you'd be sick for a month. It takes health and strength to build wards. Moreover, protection wards for yourself only work if you stay within them, so you can't use them while travelling. They won't last forever, either; nor can you keep rebuilding them. You'd tire yourself out.' Nothing was done without a

price. Each time something was warded, each time conjurations were uttered, personal strength and sword strength were depleted, a depletion only time and rest would cure. Use magic too much and you could end up prone to illness, dying of anything from pneumonia to apoplexy.

'Tell me about healing power,' I asked him. 'How effective is it?' Can you save the life of someone who has a baby ripped from her?

'It's not as effective as we'd like,' he admitted. 'My mother has made it her speciality. She says that all we can do is heal something that has a chance of healing anyway. We make the chance a certainty. And we speed up the healing process.'

'No miracles?'

'No miracles.'

As the days went by, Garis progressed to more active uses of the sword. He taught me how to use it in a more conventional way, then how to supplement fighting strokes with its power. I learned how to send forth a narrow beam of cold light that could sear or melt anything in its path for three or four paces beyond the tip of the weapon, and I began to learn how to control the power so that it could be used for delicate tasks – such as breaking open a slave collar.

I was determined to learn it all. One day, I would put it to good use. If Pinar and others of the Magoroth thought I was going to be some kind of wall decoration, never act -ally doing anything except exist, they would have to rethink; I was going to be a power in this land.

In the meantime, I was glad to tire myself out. It helped me to sleep. It helped me to forget that somewhere out there the Mirage Makers might have an interest in my death because they coveted a child;