Glenda Larke: The Heart of the mirage

Weakly, I placed the tip of the blade on the cabochon and pressed. Feeble the movement might have been, but the blade split the cabochon and drove through my hand to pin it to the rock beneath. There was no pain. I released the sword hilt, but the weapon stayed upright, quivering.

A moment later, the Ravage and its vile creatures disappeared. I was clothed in blackness. All I could see was the faint glowing outline of my sword. A mist began to form where blade met cabochon, seeping out of me, at first formless and indistinct, then becoming a bubble of vapour, mist-white against the black background. I looked into it and saw the shape there: a baby, still incomplete, and embryonic – my son, not

Pinar's. My son… and Temellin's. There was a whisper in the darkness, or perhaps it was in my head: Follow him.

I said, I don't know how. Yet even as I said the words, I floated free of my body, pulled by a mother's ties to her flesh and blood. Goddess, I thought, the shade that came into my bedroom in Sandmurram. This is what it was. Jahan. It had been fahan. No wonder I had thought him familiar when we'd first met in Madrinya.

The bubble drifted away into the utter desolation of the blackness, beckoning me with its longing.

I looked down at myself and saw my translucent form: naked, torn, defiled with sores and smirched with corruption. At my feet my body lay, solid, clothed in tatters, equally ravaged.

Free of pain, I drifted away, following my son through the darkness to his father.

And found him on the southernmost Rake. It was dawn there, and the camp was just about to settle into sleep for the day. Part of my rational mind puzzled over that – surely they should have been further away, somewhere deep in Kardiastan by now. Yet, there they all were: Temellin's small army, and Temellin himself. He stood on the edge of the rock, watching the red light of the sunrise wake the Shiver Barrens. He didn't see me at first. I opened my mouth to speak – and found I had no capacity for speech. I went to touch him, but my hand passed right through his body.

His eyes widened as he focused on the movement and realised it had form. 'Derya?'

His use of that name, the one he had known me by when we had been lovers, brought forth a rush of tenderness for him. I nodded.

He, however, was appalled. 'Are you – are you dead7'

I heard the dread in his voice and his concern warmed me. I shook my head. He stretched out a hand to touch me, but it passed through my image as though I were not there.

Then he saw the floating bubble that was the shadow self of our son, and looked at it with equal incomprehension. In the dim predawn light, I doubt he realised what it was. He looked back at me. 'You can hear me.'

I nodded again and I held out my left hand to him, indicating the split cabochon.

'You know how to release your essensa? Who taught you that? And why? It's dangerous! You are not yet Magor-strong enough to do such a thing without risk.'

Helpless to explain, I just stood. My thoughts were muddled, not fully my own.

He took a deep breath, striving to find sense in what was happening. 'Forgive me, Shirin, for what I did. For not trusting. I have your letter.' Finding no words to tell me how he felt, he made a helpless gesture with one hand. 'What can I say? I want you – and the baby.' He ran fingers through unruly hair. 'Garis told me everything. He was a fool not to go on believing you. Korden and I are on our way back to the Mirage City with half our force. In case you weren't able -' The words almost choked him. 'Is – is the Mirage City in danger, Shirin? Is that why you have come in this form? To warn us?'

I shook my head, and he slumped with relief. He sat down at the edge of the rock, but his eyes never left my face. 'I've failed you all,' he said. 'I let my personal prejudices, my mistrust of you – I let them override my wisdom. Did you stop them, the Stalwarts?'

I nodded.

'How can I – we – ever thank you?' He heaved in a breath, trying to find the right words for what he wanted to say next. 'About Pinar; I know what you did. And I thank you – for saving my son.' He paused, his face white and strained. 'I've often wondered if I could have saved Miasa's child, if I had ripped my daughter from her mother's womb at her death, if I had given that baby to the Mirage… When we all knew Miasa was dying, I broached the subject with her, thinking it may give her some comfort to know I might be able to save the baby. But she was appalled. She forbade it, again and again. She made me swear. The child was hers too; it was her body… I couldn't do it to her.' His voice trailed away and he was silent.

'I think I was wrong,' he said at last, looking away from me to the Shiver Barrens. 'With that decision I condemned the Mirage – the Mirage Makers – to further years of pain and desecration. Now it seems someone else had the strength and the determination to do'what I could not.' His grief and guilt were palpable and I longed to take him into my arms. 'I should have told you. I should have told Pinar.'

I nodded, and meant it. It had been more than just a mistake; it had been wrong.

Brand would certainly agree with that, I thought. What's more, if he ever met Temellin again, he would doubtless tell him so, at length.

He went on, 'I had no right to keep the nature of the bargain a secret. I've known it since I was ten years old, you know. I've had to live with it since then. Never knowing what to do about it. But… I was always afraid someone would sacrifice themselves. How could I face Korden, for example, if it were his wife? I didn't know what to do. So I kept it to myself. I thought maybe the Mirage Makers would solve the problem

themselves, somehow… That it would never come to this. I failed my people, Shirin. I failed my Miasa's child. I failed the Mirage Makers.'

Goddess, I thought, appalled. Realising for the first time what it must have been like for him. A child, growing up with that knowledge, not knowing who to tell. Not knowing what to do about it. Knowing that somewhere in his future he had to sanction a murder.

'Pinar,' he said, after a long pause. 'She was thoroughly irrational where you were concerned. Cabochon knows, that at least was clear enough to me. She poured out her bitterness day after day, carried it to our pallet at night.' He raised tormented eyes to me. 'My fault, I fear. I couldn't give her the love she needed to be a happy woman. You have that. You always will. And she knew it. You can't tell lies to a Magor woman. Shirin, we can work this out – is that why you came?'

The sun's rays reached us at last and by its light he saw my ravaged skin. His gasping 'Derya -/' tore at me. He stretched out a disbelieving hand towards the wound on my face, but then withdrew it, remembering I had no substance. 'The Ravage…'

I nodded again.

He swore, words I didn't know, and turned from me, shouting, his voice harsh in the windless silence of the Rake. Within moments they were there: Korden, Zerise, Garis and tens of others of the Illusos and Theuros.

'Ravage sores,' Korden said with certainty, his eyes hostile. He wouldn't forgive me Pinar's death in a hurry.

'That's her essensa,' Zerise said, her scarred face thrown into stark relief by the coming light of day. 'The other is her child.' She brushed back an untidy hank of grey hair.

'But he – he is still in her womb, surely,' Temellin protested, finally understanding the floating globe.

'The Mirage Makers must be involved, and who knows what the Mirage Makers are capable of? But she needs help, Mirager.'

This last was said with so much reluctance I found it hard to nod my agreement. I could already feel myself fading.

'Can she hear us?' asked Garis. His emotions yearned at me, full of guilt and shame, asking for my forgiveness. I pitied him; I recognised all the signs of an overdeveloped conscience playing havoc with someone who failed his own high standards. Garis was finding it hard to live with himself.