Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

Garis opened his mouth to make an indignant retort, but I stepped in first. 'I'll undergo the test again, if that will help you believe the truth.' Even as I spoke, I knew Pinar would never acknowledge the truth, no matter how large it was written. I turned to Garis, although I knew it was useless to ask for his help. He would never be able to bring himself to raise a hand against Pinar, one of the original Ten and the consort of his Mirager. I said merely, 'If I die here, Garis, it will be up to you to stop the Stalwarts. And there will be another task for you that Brand will explain.'

He gave a strangled gurgle. 'Die? No one is going to die! Pinar just wants to take you back.'

Brand was scathing. 'Look at her, you mash-brained witling! Does she look like someone about to act as an escort to the woman she considers her worst enemy?'

Garis took one look at Pinar's face and said, 'Miragerin, please think. Temellin will never forgive you if you harm Shirin -'

'He's never forgiven me anyway,' she said venomously, 'for not being her. She's won against me every time. Even when she was warded, she went on winning. Well, this is one time I'm going to win. And this will be the time that counts.'

'Murder me, and not only will you have to explain my death to Temellin,' I said, 'but you will have to explain why you also killed his son. I, too, am bearing his child, Pinar. Would you kill your child's brother?' I was gambling that she didn't know about the details of Solad's bargain, but it was a stupidity anyway; an appeal to a woman who was beyond appeal, a woman

whose mind was so fettered with jealousy nothing mattered except vengeance.

Even as I spoke, I knew I had lost. I didn't need Brand's wince, and his agonised, 'Mistake, love, mistake,'to tell me..-"

Rage boiled inside die Miragerin-consort. Her sword flared to white brilliance, spilling out of the blade.

'Pinar!' Garis cried, his anguish swamping us all, but it was Brand who moved to fling himself at her. He hit her with the impetus of his forward rush and knocked her off-balance. The beam of power she had been about to direct at me hit the ceiling, crumbling wood to splinters, and showering us all with wood-dust. Garis shoved Brand aside and tugged at Pinar's arm, shaking her. 'Pinar, for Magor sake, don't -'

'Leave me be!' she shouted, heaving him out of her way. She made a wild shot at me and I ducked and rolled. Several stones were blasted from the wall and fell to the ground outside.

Brand, blinking in the glare from Pinar's weapon, launched himself at her from behind. In a fury, she slashed back with her sword, narrowly missing Garis. Brand flung himself flat as power poured from the end of her blade and cut a smoking swathe through walls and ceiling. Garis was hit by falling stone. He sagged as he fought his dizziness, then succumbed and fell unconscious. While Pinar was distracted with the others, I heaved a piece of stonework at her head. More by luck than skill, it connected and she collapsed, blood trickling down from a temple wound.

I drew my sword, then remembered its uselessness against her and dropped it to the floor where it still glowed – together with hers – to light the room. I focused my power into my cabochon instead and prepared it to kill.

There was nothing beautiful about the Miragerin-consort as she lay there in the broken remains of stone and wood. Her hair was tangled and sprinkled with dust, her face older than her years, the skin dry and slack. I felt once more the stirrings of pity. Pinar would have been a different woman had Temellin loved her… I raised my left palm and directed it at her throat. She had no defences against me; a small flare of power and she would be dead. I could give her child to the Mirage Makers, make myself safe.

Yet I paused.

'Do it,' Brand said, pulling himself to his feet. 'She's already stirring.'

I whispered, 'She's Temellin's wife -'

'Turd take it, Ligea, since when have you been squeamish? Kill the woman and put her out of her madness and pain, because if you don't, she'll have you and the Mirage will have your son.' He turned, looking for his sword.

He was right, and I knew it. Yet I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill her.

I don't know just what kept me from murder. She was Temellin's wife, she was pregnant, she was one of the Ten orphaned and exiled because of my father's obsession for me, she was my cousin, she carried the child of a man I loved, my son's sibling – they were all reasons enough to stay my hand.

'Vortexdamn you! If you can't, I certainly can.' Brand groped around in the rubble for his sword, pulling it out from under some crumbled stone. It was slightly bent, but that hardly mattered. I was still hesitating, for the first time in my life unable to act decisively when a death was called for, unable to kill quickly and cleanly and without conscience.

And then Pinar grabbed her.sword^and erupted up

'Kit, V» V»., Z S'›4Ml

from the floor, swinging first at Brand. Taken utterly by surprise, he was felled by a flash of light and crashed back with his astonishment written in every line of his face, already beyond thought by the time his body hit the floor. Then his surprise and shock blinked out of existence.

I couldn't sense him. I couldn't sense him.

I sent forth my cabochon power in protest and Pinar was hurled backwards, hitting the wall behind her with a clunking thud. Yet there was no change in her expression or her alertness. She smiled, warded herself and pointed her Magor sword at the centre of my chest.

She said, 'I have you now.' Brittle words of promise and I didn't even notice.

Brand… Please, not Brand. It wasn't possible. Yet that was his body there on the floor. Could any normal man take the brunt of a bolt from a Magor sword and live?

My fault. I had broken every rule I ever learned about surviving a brawl and now my closest friend was dead. Because of my foolishness, my misplaced compassion. Another body to bury under my bloodied doorstep.,. What's her unborn child to you, anyway? What about your unborn child?

Grief such as I had never known submerged me. Oh, Goddess, cabochon, Brand] The only true friend I'd ever had. Who had never doubted me, all through the years.

The hot pain of loss seared; unspilled tears turned to fury.

I called up the whirlwind, the storm. It came tinged with the potency of my anger and swept into the room, tearing at us all. I centred it on Pinar, trying to wrench the sword from her hand. A flash of energy

and light shot from her blade and met the wind in a whirl of gold and light and swirling rage. Power was flung out in random bolts, shattering more stones and shredding room furnishings. I myself was lashed with it, my clothes torn, my skin blasted with grit. Across the room Pinar screamed at me, but the wind brushed aside the words unheard.

Another bolt flared outwards in my direction. I raised my cabochon against it and the power of the two met, clashing in a maelstrom of spitting wrath and sparks. The strength of the sword was greater, and 1 felt my hold over the wind falter..Pinar's wards protected her; my own – poor weak things made using a cabochon, not a sword – could have been cobwebs spun to impede the thrust of a gorclak charge for all the good they did. No ward I could raise would offer me a defence against her sword.

The whirlwind was now full of colour and spinning with misdirected power, a horrifying storm of destruction, yet still Pinar could keep it at bay and ‹ have her sword pour out its stream of puissance. I staggered behind the ineffective barriers of the wind and cabochon, feeling my strength slip away as Pinar's power battered me, rammed me against the wall, pierced me with splinters of pain. I knew I could not withstand much more.

I concentrated on the whirlwind, tightening its circles, forcing it faster and faster into a smaller and smaller area until it was just a blur of dust and energy hardly the size of a man's arm. I quenched my pain – it was a distraction I could do without – and coaxed the twist of air to do my bidding. And Pinar, alarmed, swung at it -