Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

I laid my hand in the correct place, and opened my mouth to say the words – and couldn't do it.

I, who'd slid a knife into several people during my years as a compeer and then walked away without a qualm, couldn't kill the life growing in me. It wasn't the Mirage Makers who stopped me. It was the thought that this was Temellin's child, and I couldn't kill his son.

The next morning when I awoke, I thought about that. I thought of all Brand had said about the woman I had been. And after breakfast, I turned to the books, skimming through volume after volume, looking for references to the Ravage. Most authors who mentioned it subscribed to the theory that it was a disease. The Mirage Makers, the theory went, were living beings and as such were prone to infection, just as humans were. The Ravage was a disease or an infection like gangrene or a suppurating abscess. The creatures inside the Ravage were the animals that lived inside such infection. One writer even postulated that little creatures lived inside our infections too, but we couldn't see them because they were small, just as no, one would be able to see what was in the Ravage if it

were scaled down in size. Needless to say, I didn t give any credit to that idea.

In the past, the Magoroth had attempted to cure the sores in the same way as they might try to cure an abscess or gangrene, by cleaning them out and washing the wound left in the land. It hadn't worked. None of the texts had mentioned the kind of hallucination I had suffered. No one seemed to have been attacked with such intense personal hatred as I had been.

I continued to explore the books, my hunt fuelled by a desperation only partially choked down to a manageable level. And finally I found a writer who had another theory. Perhaps, he wrote, the Ravage was caused by the evil of the creatures within, rather than the other way around. The creatures were evil, ergo, the effect they had was also evil. The author offered no evidence to back his idea, and I wasn't sure I agreed with him, either.

I knew the things I'd seen in the Ravage weren't true creatures. They weren't like insects or worms. I'd felt them as much as seen them, and I'd never before felt anything that wasn't human. The emotions of normal animals were as closed to me as they were to anyone else. I knew a growling dog or a spitting cat was angry when I saw and heard them, not because I sensed the rage. I puzzled over this, even wondering if the Ravage creatures were some form of deformed human.

In the end, I decided the hatred of the Ravage beasts for me, and the Mirage Makers' need of a child, were linked. At a guess, the Mirage Makers believed a Magoroth child who became a Mirage Maker would make them strong enough to win the ongoing battle with the Ravage. The Ravage wanted me dead because they wanted to stop the Mirage Makers getting hold of my child.

I had to be careful, or I was going to die, killed by the Ravage. Or by the Magoroth, to settle Solad's murderous bargain with the Mirage Makers. And I couldn't expect the Mirage Makers to help me.

I sighed. My future was looking increasingly grim.

I couldn't risk telling Temellin about the baby. If Pinar got to hear of it, and if she knew the nature of Solad's bargain, she'd be lobbying the others to sacrifice me and my son. I knew how strongly the Magor felt about the covenant between themselves and the Mirage Makers. I knew they would want to uphold any new agreement Solad had made. Without it, there would eventually be no Mirage Makers.

And who better to supply the child than a Tyranian compeer they didn't trust? Which left the question: would Temellin sanction my killing, even if I were unwilling? There had been a time when he wouldn't have contemplated it. But now? He wouldn't like it, but if he were under pressure from the others? Perhaps he now despised me enough to do it without a qualm. The difficult part would be to offer his own son…

As soon as he found out I was pregnant, he would have to order my death. He really didn't haye any choice. Without the Mirage Makers' support, there would be no Magor – and I was expendable. One supposedly traitorous woman's life in exchange for a whole way of life and the health of the land. It was a bargain.

If I had been truly Kardi, brought up a Magoria, believing in the greater good of my fellow Magoroth, perhaps I would have made the sacrifice gladly. But I wasn't. Underneath I was still Ligea, and she was the kind of person who'd go to her death kicking and screaming every inch of the way…

The powerlessness of my existence gnawed at me. Imprisonment, I found, was something not taken too kindly by even the remnants of Ligea, Brotherhood Compeer. It wasn't the feeling of confinement that tortured, although that was bad enough. It was the feeling I had no influence over anyone, and even less over my own future. I could die one night, unexpectedly, if the Ravage came, and I could do nothing about it. I wanted to talk to someone about it. But there was no one. I considered mentioning it to Reftim, the miasma of his antipathy followed him into the room with every visit. He would have seen me dead without hesitation, and his attitude was doubtless a reflection of every Magor in the Maze. I was so Goddessdamned lonely.

I turned back to my studies of Magor magic, as recounted in the books.

And found out how Temellin had escaped the might of Tyrans. An imprisoned Magoroth of skill could use his cabochon to burn through the iron of manacles, produce pain in people bathed in its light, or raise a temporary ward between his skin and the blows rained on him. The one thing Temellin couldn't have done was make smoke appear out of nowhere. Anything like that would have been an illusion – a mirage – and mirages were banned to the Magor. Ciceron, the officer in charge of the execution, must have been right: something had been sprinkled on the wood of the execution pyre beforehand. Which meant, not surprisingly, that others had helped Temellin to escape.

Of more surprise to me was the discovery that the Magor could enhance their hearing if they wished. My true identity could have been discovered mucrj^arlier ^

if Temellin or Pinar or one of the other Magor had listened in on my conversations with Brand. But they hadn't. Evidently, strong Magor distaste for invading another's privacy prevented such an action, although I suspected that where Pinar was concerned, it was perhaps more likely she just hadn't listened at the right times.

The days of my incarceration began to fly past. I hunched over the books, reading and rereading, then practising what I learned. Garis had already shown me much that was helpful; even so, I made mistakes. After three days of trying to light a candle from a distance, as Pinar had done, I finally produced a beam of light, set fire to my desk and crumbled part of the wall. My next attempt melted the candle to an unusable lump of wax and shattered the holder to powder. Fortunately, I improved with time. Even more luckily, the Mirage Makers repaired the damage before Reftim entered my room again.

I learned how to draw a ward of a simple kind around myself with my cabochon. It would not prevent a skilled Magor from entering that space, but it ensured I would always know when they did. It meant I could not be surprised by an intruder while I was asleep.

Nor could I be poisoned. It was comforting to have in writing what I had already assumed to be true: the passing of my cabochon over food or water would always betray a poison into displaying itself. However, no one tried poison again; all food brought to me was just as it should have been.

Unhappily, a ward drawn with swords, such as the one imprisoning me, could not be broken by the person who was the object of it. The door to my room remained unlocked. Anyone else could come and go