Glenda Larke: The Heart of the mirage

'Yes,' the Illusa replied. 'But her essensa has no strength, no substance.'

Temellin cut her short. 'I want to get to her. I am going to follow her back.'

Zerise's razored features jabbed at me even as she looked at him. 'She is close to death wherever she is. Act wisely, Mirager. Kardiastan relies on you for its future.' Her emphasis nagged at me, telling me something, but I had no inclination to think about it just then.

'No, wait -' Korden interrupted. 'Temel, think] If you go as an essensa, how will you be able to help her if you have no substance?'

'My cabochon will retain its powers. Some of them, anyway. Garis, get my sword.'

'What can you do for her that she can't do for herself? She has her own cabochon! She's dying, Temel.* There's nothing you can do. But if you go, you may not come back. There's always a chance the essensa may lose its hold on reality – forget it has a body to go back to. And if it delays too long, the body dies.'

'I've done it before,' he pointed out, his voice tight with irritation. 'And so did Jahan, when we needed a spy after I'd lost my sword.'

I wanted to laugh at the irony. If Jahan had glimpsed me that night in the Prefect's villa in Sandmurram, my whole charade as Derya would have been doomed from the start.

'It was dangerous then, and it's dangerous now,' Korden said. 'You shouldn't risk yourself.'

Temellin looked back at me as Garis returned and handed him his sword. 'There's not much a person can do as an essensa, but if you are ill with the effects of Ravage sores, I can help to heal you.'

But Korden still wasn't about to give up. 'If you must help her, send someone else.'

'This is my child. They are both my responsibility.'

'This is the woman who killed your wife,' Korden said, 'who killed one of the Ten.'

Temellin turned on him, almost vicious. 'This is the woman who went to save your family, Korden, when our foolishness left the Mirage City undefended and our future – our children – in jeopardy. And you'd better hope she did succeed against the Stalwarts, as she says she has, because if she has failed, there's little hope we'll get there before the legionnaires do.' He pointed to the sword-shaped mark on my breast. 'Look at that, Korden, and tell me she's not worth saving.'

Illusa-zerise laid a hand on Korden's arm. 'He is your Mirager, Magori,' she said, resigned.

'He's also my cousin – my friend! I can't let him kill himself for this – this – Tyranian traitor!'

'Magoria-shirin is your cousin too.' The words came not from Temellin, but from Garis. 'And she is Kardi. Don't make the same mistake I did, Magori.' He

blushed miserably, embarrassed perhaps by his temerity, perhaps by the memory of his unjustified suspicions of me.

But Temellin was done with talking. He sat and pressed his sword down onto his cabochon. As mine had done, it split and the sword went on into his hand. He lay back down on the rock.

Zerise cried, 'Fah-Ke-Cabochon-rez!' and the words were taken up by all standing there, even Korden.

A mistiness gathered around his cabochon, a fog that grew and took on form as it swelled, pouring out of the palm. It wavered, gained definition and then steadied: Temellin, naked and visible, but with an unreality about his figure. The face lacked expression, the body moved with a stately smoothness that seemed unreal. The skin was waxy smooth, the eyes unblinking.

The Temellin lying on the red rocks of the Rake was as motionless as death.

I turned to our son and the blackness closed iri on me once more.

I was back in my body, back with the pain, in desperate need of air. And so very, very tired. It was tough even to keep my eyes open. I wanted to slip away… I managed – just – to wrench the sword point from my cabochon. The gem closed up behind the blade, leaving the surface unblemished.

Temellin stood rigid and taut a few paces away. His cabochon glowed gold, casting an eerie light on his sweat-glazed skin and the knotted muscles of his body. The fluid ooze of the Ravage did not seem to touch him; he had enclosed himself within a warded space, perhaps more out of distaste for his surroundings than any real need. The corruption of the Ravage could not hurt an essensa. Nor could its creatures; they swam in frustrated circles, tails flicking angrily, spines and claws and talons extended.

Temellin gave them a cursory glance as though he were dismissing them from his calculations. I knew better; he paid them no attention because he didn't need to just then – but he knew exactly how dangerous they would be to me the moment I left the cocoon of safety the Mirage Makers had built for me.

He looked up at Brand and made a throwing gesture with his hand, following it with a mime of rope pulling. Seconds later, a length of rope curled out over the Ravage, rested for a moment on the surface scum, then began to sink, slowly, through the muck. Ignored by the swimming beasts, it finally landed several paces from where I lay.

I didn't know what good it would do. I was too weak to move, too close to suffocation to do more than lie as still as possible. And Temellin couldn't touch or hold anything.

I underestimated him. He may not have been able to pick up the rope, but with his cabochon powers he could call up a wind, and he could penetrate the ward the Mirage Makers had placed around me. It was hardly a gale he created, but it was sufficient to stir the viscidity of the Ravage, to create a flow. The Ravage resisted, but it was Temellin who prevailed. The rope wavered forward on the flux, inched into my cocoon of protection and then under the curve of my ankle. It took longer to coax the flow upwards so the rope snaked around my foot, then over itself to make a knot.

Finally it was done.

Temellin looked at me in compassion, then nodded to Brand.

And I was back in the Ravage, back in the agony, back in the midst of the beasts. A battle boiled around me, with Temellin at the centre of it. Gold fire sizzled in rotting flesh, globules of molten fire spattered and burned. A worm-shaped creature disintegrated in a gush of pus; another melted. Something tangled momentarily in my hair before a beam of light seared a hole through its body and, threshing in pain, it dropped away into the depths. I was drenched with the decay of evil. I swam in bloodied slime and green rot…

Then I was free, cradled in Brand's arms. I let go and faded into the nothingness beyond me.

When I woke, I didn't, open my eyes. I wanted to test the world little by little, one sense at a time, in case it was better not to wake at all.

Touch first. I was warm. I was wrapped up in something that prickled roughly, and the heat from a fire warmed one side of my body. More intimately, joints and muscles protested; my skin felt raw enough. to have been exposed to the Shiver Barrens for a day or two; my cheek ached. A tentative fingering of my face told me I had an indentation there that would be permanent. I'd been scarred.

Next, hearing. The crackle of the fire, the far-off sound of river water over stones, and the nearby rustle of someone moving quietly. I had the idea it had been a voice that had awoken me. They were all pleasant sounds.

And pleasant smells too: the sweet scent of cooking remba rhizomes mixed with barbecued meat. Brand had been hunting again. There was also a whiff of shleth, a little too strong an aroma for my taste, as though I'd been snuggled up to one in my sleep.

Next, I tried my cabochon sensing powers – nothing. They were far too weak.

I opened my eyes.

Temellin's essensa hovered at my side; Brand was by the fire. Neither of them was looking at me. Brand was gazing at Temellin belligerently, which seemed odd, considering the essensa was now much more ethereal than it had been. In such a form, the Mirager was hardly somebody to raise Brand's ire. But irate he was. He said, 'Do you know what hell she went through thinking she would be the one to supply the Mirage