The Heart of the mirage

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Instead, I remained most of the day lying on my pallet, looking at a ceiling made of rippling waves of water that defied gravity, and seeing none of it. An Illuser I didn't know came with my meals. He told me his name was Reftim and he was carefully neutral when he spoke to me. He was a small rotund man, with rounded features, a puffball nose and the face of a market joke-teller, but I sensed his antipathy and did not make the mistake of equating his jovial looks with his character. However, he was polite enough and, in answer to my first question, he told me Brand was also confined to his room. I asked him to tell Temellin I must see him and he promised to pass on the message.

But Temellin didn't come.

Later in the day, Reftim did bring Aemid to see me.

She looked wretched. Her face was swollen, her eyes reddened. I wanted to hug her, comfort her, but my sense of betrayal stopped me. She should have had faith in me.

'I'm sorry,' she said. Her eyes were fixed on the floor. T couldn't let you betray my land.'

'Our land,' I amended. 'I wasn't going to. You should have known me better.'

She met my gaze then, and her expression hardened. 'I did. That's the trouble. I saw what you became. You became like him. Gayed. You even had the same look in your eyes, the look of someone who doesn't care what happens to others as long as you reach your goal.' She took a deep breath. T know it's my fault. And I deserve punishment. I think this must be it – to see you here, imprisoned like this. To know that the little girl who so bravely hid her cabochon from them because her mother told her to… To see her become the woman I see now, trapped here for the

rest of her life. All because I allowed it to happen. I failed you. I'm sorry, Ligea. I'm so, so sorry.'

She started crying and turned from me. Reftim led her through the ward and out of the room. I averted my face so he wouldn't see the tears welling up in my own eyes. She was right. I had tried so hard to be like Gayed. And I had promised her I wouldn't pose as a Kardi, only to break that promise without a second thought? That was the person I had become.

The next day, I asked to see Korden. He came, bringing all his dislike and distrust with him, none of which he bothered to conceal. 'Well?' he asked without preamble, but I could see that the room startled him. In addition to the wall drawings, one corner now contained a floating set of multicoloured bubbles, each the size of a man's fist and full of moving pictures portraying an insane world of animals that became people, people who became flowers, stars that talked and similar absurdities.

'Several things,' I said. 'You can be as arbitrary as you like with me, but Brand deserves better. A fair hearing. After all, anything else smacks too much of Tyrans, does it not?'

'In matters of treason, it is the will of the Mirager that prevails,' he said stiffly.

'Brand can hardly be said to have committed treason. He is not Kardi,' I snapped. 'You know Brand cannot lie to you. See to it the Mirager is fair. It is your duty as one of the Magoroth, surely.' i 'What else?' 1 'I would like to know my fate.'

'Most of the Magor are pressing for your execution. But we Magoroth have voted to allow the Mirager to

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after all. Besides, you are – unfortunately – his heir, which means it is difficult to subject you to the ordinary processes of Magor law anyway. Although there are many who feel we shouldn't bother with niceties like that.'

'I would like to see him.'

'He does not want to see you.'

'Do I get no opportunity to defend myself?'

'That is also the Mirager's decision.'

'Rough justice, eh?'

His lips tightened, but he said nothing.

I breathed in, deeply. I had made up my mind. It was time to make irrevocable my decision on whether I was Tyranian or Kardi. Time to bring an end to lies, to deceit, to keeping my options open. And yet, it was so hard to say the next words, to discard publicly the values of a lifetime and replace them with other principles. Ligea Gayed was difficult to kill.

'Korden,' I began, 'when I was still in Tyrans I heard of a plan to attack the Mirage from the west. The legion known as the Stalwarts was to be sent across the Alps -'

He laughed and his scorn swirled around him. 'What is this, some kind of joke? Next, you'll be telling me they intend to bring their gorclaks across the peaks. The mountains are impassable.'

'The plan is a serious one. Taking into account the difficulties of the terrain, the amount of preparation involved, and considering the seasons, I estimate the forces will arrive in less than three months' time. A whole legion; three thousand on foot perhaps, and another seven hundred mounted Stalwarts, on gorclak.'

'Don't be ridiculous. No such force could ever cross the Alps!'

'Your parents' generation underestimated Tyrans. Don't make the same mistake. Especially not of the Stalwarts.' I frowned, baffled by the intensity of his disbelief. 'You know the truth when you hear it. Why, then, should you doubt me?'

He remained contemptuous and angry. 'Believe me, we have talked about little else lately. We have come to the conclusion that you must be able to do what we cannot: hide a lie. How else could you have walked among us concealing your identity so cleverly? Temellin even slept with you without sensing your duplicity! You are an enormous danger to us. You represent something we always felt was impossible: a liar in our midst.'

I stared at him, suddenly aware of another emotion, inadequately concealed, lingering around him. Korden was in a state of shock.

I tried to explain. 'I didn't lie to any of you. I just didn't tell all the story. There's a difference. You can see that, can't you?'

But he couldn't. The Magor not only didn't lie, they didn't try to deceive. And the ordinary Kardi, awed by the reputation of the Magor, would never have tried, either. What I had done was unthinkable, and it had left them reeling. Their only explanation was that I was able to conceal lies; therefore nothing I said could be automatically believed.

He said finally, T can't possibly imagine what you hope to gain by telling this tale about the Stalwarts.'

'Tell Temellin. And tell him I must see him.'

'I'll tell him. But don't wait up.'

He turned on his heel and left.

Temellin did not come to see me until the next day. He was not alone; Brand was with him.

Brand entered first, his expression as unreadable as ever. He didn't speak, but he came up to me and raised the back of his hand to my cheek in an intimate gesture of caring far more moving than any kiss would have been. I looked away from him to Temellin. I sensed a tinge of shame and uncertainty about the Mirager as he watched the two of us.

He did not greet me. He said flatly, 'You wanted to see me?' and then walked across the room, avoiding eight or nine fish swimming around in an expanse of apparently unconfined water at head-height, to stand with his back to the hole in the wall.

From where I stood he was a silhouette, rigid and forbidding. He continued, 'You have an unlikely tale about a Stalwart invasion of the Mirage. I asked Aemid what she knew about it. She said, not unexpectedly, that she had never heard of it. So now I'm going to ask Brand, because if there is such a thing planned, I'm sure you would have told him. Tell me what you know about it, Brand – and remember I can detect lies.'

Brand looked at me helplessly, his anger at Temellin growing.

I intervened. 'He knows nothing.'

'She didn't tell me everything. Only those things where she thought my advice would be useful,' Brand said.

Temellin looked unconvinced. 'That's not what Aemid says. She says Ligea always asked your advice.' He sighed. 'You're loyal, I'll say that for you, Brand. What I can't understand is why. She'd put a slave collar around your neck again the moment she had the chance.'

'Ligea freed me before we ever came to the Mirage. She has paid me for every year of my service to her or to her father. I give my loyalty to her because she is worthy

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of it, not because I am ordered to do so. In fact, she has been asking me to leave her, to seek a life of my own.'

Temellin looked at him, astonished. 'Then why didn't you?'

'I didn't want to leave, that's why. And I'm glad I didn't. Ligea's damned lucky she didn't die in the dining hall with your sodding sword in her heart – how could you do that to a woman who gave you all the love she had to give? She would have died for you half a dozen times over, but you couldn't trust her, could you?' His voice was so thick with contempt he could scarcely speak. 'When I think of the way she felt about you -'

'It seems she has fooled you just as she fooled us.'

'Ligea and I were brought up together. There's nothing I don't know about the way she thinks. She was raised by men who tried to twist her into a coldblooded instrument of their revenge. They tried, but they didn't succeed, because she could never quite reconcile what they tried to make of her with what she knew herself to be. They tried to sharpen her into a ruthless killer; instead, she made torture obsolete in the Cages of Tyr. How could you have loved her, and not sensed her capacity for loving?'

'You're the one who is mole-blind -'

Brand shook his head, his stare in Temellin's direction unforgiving. 'I remember the day I arrived at General Gayed's house in Tyr. He'd just bought me, cheap, at a slave auction. I was twelve years old, a dirty, skinny, ill-fed boy who had spent two whole years on auction blocks, being passed from one foul slave dealer to another across the Exaltarchy. I'd been beaten, starved and abused in ways you probably haven't even heard of. My parents were dead, my home and my inheritance stolen from me, my body used.'

He turned away from Temellin, apparently to look at the fish. I doubt he really saw them, though. 'I remember seeing Ligea for the first time. I think Gayed had bought me as a sort of joke, to see what she'd do with me. I was hardly a quality slave. He'd got me from the docks in Tyr where they sell the dross of the slave trade. Most girls brought up the way Ligea was would have scorned me, sent me to be die middenboy in the stables. She looked me over and I could see her anger growing. But she wasn't angry at me, or even at her father.

'"Who beat you like that?" she asked. It was a hard question to answer – I'd been beaten so many times – but I gave her the name of the slaver who'd inflicted the last and most vicious beating. I never spoke of it again, and neither did she, but ten years later, when she had the means to do so, she had that man banned from the slave trade and his assets impounded by the State for tax evasion.

'She was ten years old when she saw me for the first time. She could have seen the dirt, the sullen face, the ugliness of an undernourished body – but she didn't. She saw only the abuse. And hated it.

'I was her slave for eighteen years before she freed me. I never felt less than her friend, for all that she maintained the conventions of a slave-owner relationship. I know that as a compeer she's killed people, condemned others to a lifetime in the Cages of Tyr, but I've never known her to be less than fair, or to harm anyone who wasn't a criminal. Her special abilities saved as many people from torture or wrongful imprisonment or execution as condemned them to such.'

He looked across at Temellin. 'But what's the use in talking to you – you've made up your mind, haven't -,:: -L – M, Jk.- wr M.

you? Condemned her on the word of your bitch-wife and a prematurely old nurse who hadn't the spine to tell her charge the truth about herself when she was a • child. You aren't fit to lead a nation, Temellin. Even with all your powers you still don't recognise the truth when the smell of it is in your nostrils. Vortexdamn you, you had everything I would have given the world for, and you tried to kill her. If I were free, I'd run a sword through your innards sooner than I'd look on your face again.' He turned his back and went to stand by the door, his dismissal of his jailer as rudely abrupt as he knew how to make it.

And Temellin accepted the dismissal. He called someone to come and escort the Altani back to his room.

I hoped Brand understood the look I gave him as he left. It was the only way I had to say thank you. He'd been my slave, and he could still defend me. I had never been so humbled.

r Ikv -R'-v It was hard to be alone with Temellin.

I opted to keep the conversation away from the personal and said, 'The Stalwarts are coming. And that's the truth. You are supposed to be able to distinguish a lie when you hear it.'

'Can I, though, with you? If Brand had known about them, I would have believed you. But he didn't. And why, if you had changed your loyalties, did you not tell me of this invasion before? You would take an oath to serve Kardiastan, and yet you wouldn't mention an intended attack on the country; worse still, on this part of it – the Mirage? Everything that you've done, Shirin, begs to make me wonder about your honesty. It begs me to wonder if you can do what others can't, and disguise your lies in the same way we can all hide our

emotions.' He sounded rational and unemotional, but I could feel his contempt. And his pain. 'There was one other person who deceived us with his lies. We don't know who it was, but we do know it was one of us. A Magoroth. We trusted, because we didn't believe we could be deceived. And he brought Tyranian legionnaires into the Shimmer Feast, and killed our parents, yours and mine, and all our cousins, all the babies in the nursery and our whole way of life. I can never risk that happening again. Never!

His resolution, as hard as the iron in his voice, was thick in the air about him, but so was his underlying horror. He believed he had come close to another such abomination occurring because of me. And he was right. I had come to the Mirage with the intention to betray them all. And what then? Would I have stood by and watched while the legionnaires killed babies, and thought it a job well done? Dear Goddess, what had I been?

I ripped away all the covers from my inner mind, let him sense whatever he wanted, bared myself to him as I had never done to anyone before. Even so, the words did not come easily. 'Temel, I was too ashamed to tell you the truth. Ashamed of what I had been. Ashamed of the role I played in strengthening the Exaltarchy. And I was afraid you would despise me, reject me. I was going to tell you eventually – I just wanted you all to know me better first. It was what I wanted to tell you about, the day you arrived back from Sandmurram. I knew I could not delay any longer.' Everything I said sounded weak to my ears. Ridiculous. I had been a Brotherhood Compeer, and here I was describing the doubts and frailties more appropriate to an adolescent girl. Yet it was the truth.

It was just that loving him had rendered me an idiot. ^

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^p He snorted. 'You knew you couldn't delay because you were afraid Pinar might find out about you in Madrinya. Perhaps you even guessed she had gone there expressly to investigate you.'

'Perhaps. I was a coward, Temellin. I didn't really want you to know, so I kept on postponing the telling.'

He put his head to one side and looked at me. 'Do you know,' he said finally, 'I have a great deal of trouble believing that. If there was ever anything that impressed me, it was – is – your courage.'

'There are different kinds of fear, Temellin. I was afraid of losing your respect. Perhaps I was even afraid of having made the wrong choice. As long as I didn't tell you about the Stalwarts, I could always change my mind… and betray you to Tyrans. I knew I loved you – loved you as a lover. But it was hard for me to believe in this love of mine for you. I was brought up to believe love was a weakness I must never allow. I was taught that to feel too much was a failing, not a virtue. It was even harder for me to acknowledge this respect I was learning for much that was Kardi; it went against everything I had ever been. You want the absolute truth? I had made my choice. I made it before I took the oath, and when I swore to uphold the Covenant, I meant it, but it wasn't until I stood there in the dining room and knew you were going to kill me that I was certain I had made the right choice. In that moment, I knew it didn't matter if I died – what mattered was you, and what you believed in. For the first time in my life, I cared more about someone else than I cared about myself.'

He looked down at the floor. T wish I could believe you. But I can't; on your own admission you were, lying to us when we first met, and I had no inkling of it. Not even when I lay with you. You were very clever.

No one I know could hide so much when cabochon to cabochon. Your lies are impossible to detect. How can I ever believe what you say now?'

'But, Temel, I didn't lie to you! I never lied to you. I just-just didn't tell you the whole truth. I let you jump to conclusions. There's a difference. Temellin, please – look into me now. You must be able to sense my truth.'

'How can I be sure? I doubt everything now! I doubt every relationship I've ever had because of what you have done. I even look at my friends with suspicion, and wonder if they deceive me as you did. I look at Korden, and wonder if one day he'll stab me in the back because he wants to be the Mirager. I look at my wife and wonder if I dare tell her my secrets. You've made me doubt myself. Doubt my fitness to lead this land and these people.'

We stared at each other. I choked on the lump in my throat, aware of the damage I had done. Useless to say I hadn't meant it.

He continued, 'And as for this supposed invasion over the Alps, Aemid says you have a lover among the Stalwarts. Someone you have been bedding for years. She says anything you knew about the Stalwarts would have come from him, so if there was an invasion, he would probably be part of it. But she also says you would never betray this man; you are too close. She says you would never deliberately endanger his life.'

'Do you think that comes easily to me?' I asked and allowed him to feel my bitterness. 'I had to make a choice between Kardiastan and Tyrans, and I made it. Either way a man… a man I care about is endangered. I chose you and Kardiastan rather than Favonius and Tyrans. I stand by that choice, although if Favonius dies, his death will haunt me. He is a brave man, and he has been a good friend.'

»! 'Betrayal comes easy to you, it seems.'*› ‹-''«›'

I drew a sharp breath at the hurt in that. 'You can't have it both ways, Temellin. Either I am betraying you or I am betraying Favonius. It can't be both. To one of you I am true. To you – my brother.' I stood up and went to go to him, but he held up his hands as if to fend off my approach and I stopped. 'You still don't believe me, do you? Not a word of it -'

'No,' he said sadly. 'I don't believe you. You're my sister, and just the thought of what was done to you rasps my soul. The bastards took a child and corrupted her. That was the little Shirin I remember. They bent her and used her and probably laughed at her behind her back while they did it. But all that doesn't make me trust you now. I can't see anything of her in you. She was sweet and trusting and kind.' He folded his arms, his whole stance one of rejection. 'And now I am left with a puzzling question. Just why do you want us to believe in this Stalwart invasion?'

I didn't answer. What could I have said?

'There must be a good reason. It's a diversion of some sort, isn't it? You want us to worry about the wrong place, or the wrong kind of danger. What is it the Brotherhood really has planned for us, Legata? I've heard enough about them to know they are masters of deviousness, of deception, of plots and counterplots. And this, I know, must be one such. You're General Gayed's daughter and Rathrox Ligatan's apprentice, and Aemid says she believes you were sent here at the express order of Exaltarch Bator Korbus. All three men were once humiliated at the hands of Kardiastan. You came as the lance blade of their revenge, Shirin. Did they know when they took you that you were my sister? They did, didn't they! Were you to gain the trust of us all, then kill me and take over as Mirager? Is that

what you are trying to hide from us with this fanciful tale of the Stalwarts crossing the Alps, a tale you conveniently tell only when your main deception is uncovered?'

I still didn't speak; I couldn't think of any words to convince him of the truth.

A fleeting look of anguish crossed his face. 'Ah, Shirin, Shirin – it hurts so much to look at you, to see what they made of you. It could so easily have been… different. When Solad sent the Ten to the Mirage, I cried because they didn't include you. "Can't you make it eleven?" I asked. Shirin, we shouldn't be standing here like this, as enemies. We should be husband and wife with children playing at our feet. You've lived among us, you've seen what sort of people we are – can't you be one of us now?' He must have known the question was ridiculous. It was exactly what I did want, and exactly what his disbelief wouldn't allow him to grant.

I said, 'No matter what I said, you'd still doubt me. The truth remains the same. I'm not your enemy, Temellin. Not any more.'

The look he gave me then was poignant in its sadness. 'I suppose I shouldn't blame you for what you are. As a child I was taken to the Mirage; you were taken to Tyrans. Had it been the other way around, who is to say what might have been? And you're right, of course; no matter what you said, I would have my doubts. So much of you is Tyranian. Worse still, you know too much. You have too much power and the potential for so much more. We cannot let you have your liberty, perhaps not ever. When I threw my sword at you, I acted in passion and it was an evil thing I did. I'm glad you had deliberately protected yourself against it, for cabochon knows, you are still my sister

and I don't want your death. But in truth, perhaps it would have been kinder for you to have died then, for I doubt you can ever be freed.'

My heart wobbled absurdly; there were tears in his eyes.

'It wasn't deliberate,' I said, but I doubt he heard.

'I'm sorry, Shirin. I'm sorrier than I can say – for everything. I wish – I wish things could have been different.'

'They could be, if you believed me. Never mind. When the Stalwarts attack, perhaps you'll think again.' If it's not too late for all of us. Too late for the Mirage.

'If there's anything you need, ask. I will see that you receive anything within reason to make your imprisonment more comfortable.'

'Oh, go away, Temellin. Imprisonment cannot be anything but uncomfortable, even when the Mirage does its best to entertain me. Watch out for the fish,' I added as he turned abruptly to leave me.

After he had gone I sat down shakily, all my emotions spilling free once I was alone.,•,-.

Two nights later, Pinar came.

She came late, long after I had fallen asleep and she came silently, yet I was attuned to the malignancy of the emotional aura surrounding her. I woke the moment she stepped into the room. 'What do you want, Pinar?' I asked.

She did not answer. She raised her left hand and sent a narrow beam of light around the room from her cabochon. When it illuminated the candle on the desk under the window, she let it linger a moment and the candle flamed. By its light she began a circuit of the room, investigating the fish in their water, the bubbles and their pictures, the wall paintings, the bathroom.

By the time she had finished, I had flung on a shawl and was sprawled casually in die room's only chair.

She came to stand before me, sword sheathed, hands on her hips. 'What is the meaning of all this?' she asked. "Why do the Mirage Makers do this for you?'

I shrugged. 'Perhaps to compensate for my wrongful imprisonment?'

'Temellin should have killed you. You are dangerous to us somehow -'

I made a gesture of weariness. 'Pinar, don't be moondaft. Soon you'll be convincing yourself I really did try to kill you and not the other way around.'

'What I did was justified. You are still a danger to us. And just as bad, having to imprison you here like this is devastating Temellin. He is tortured by guilt. Guilt! As if he has anything to be guilty about! I've tried to tell him we'd all be better off if you were dead, but he won't listen.'

I raised an eyebrow, the mockery a cover to my own pain. 'Poor Pinar, only a few weeks married, and already your husband ignores your suggestions?'

The tight expression on her face reminded me of Rathrox when he was planning revenge on someone who had slighted him.

The feeling remained, even when she'd gone. For the first time in my adult life, I had no control over my own destiny. I'd never felt so helpless and frustrated. So powerless. I doubt if anyone could have devised a more effective form of revenge than this one.

The next morning, as usual, Illuser-reftim brought my breakfast and left it on the desk. Normally he gave a swift look around to see what changes had been wrought during the night; this time he didn't seem interested. There wasn't anything new anyway, nor had anything been taken away. The fish were still

swimming in their unconfined waters and occasionally one would poke its nose out into the air before withdrawing into the safely of its element. Reftim ignored them, ducked his head in my direction without looking at me, either, and left the room as quickly as he could.

Worried by his behaviour, I went to the desk and sat down. Fresh bread, a glass of juice, a pot of hot herbal tea, smoked fish, fresh fruit. My normal breakfast. I stared at it without appetite.

I jabbed my knife into the fish, more in a gesture of disgust at my situation than with any intent of eating it. And smelled something that didn't seem quite right: a faint whiff of unpleasantness. It was vaguely familiar and, a moment later, I knew why: it reminded me of the Ravage.

I stared at the fish; it looked normal. I opened up my palm and passed my left hand over the meal without believing anything would come of such a gesture, yet as I looked, I saw a writhing black mass appear in the middle of the fish. In revulsion I flung the tray and all its contents away from me, smashing them from the desk onto the floor.

Some time later, Reftim returned to clear away the tray. His face glistened with sweat and his initial step into the room, even before his glance took in the empty desk and the food on the floor, was the palsied movement of an old man. Then he paled, the colour draining from his plump face so fast I thought he would faint. His guilt was obvious, but I knew he was not the initiator. I stood leaning against the door, waiting while he wordlessly cleaned up the mess. When he had finished and was on his way out with the tray, I did not move and he was forced to stop in front of me.

'In all my years working for the Brotherhood, I never poisoned anyone,' I said.

The colour returned to his face as rapidly as it had left it. 'Magoria -' he began, but his shame strangled any further words in the back of his throat.

'Do you think the Mirager would approve?'

He did not reply.

I knew I had no hope of him reporting the attempt, not when he himself was involved. 'Tell Pinar she will have to do better than that,' I said and stood aside to let him pass.

Once he had gone, I crossed the room to the desk and hit the desktop with the flat of my right hand, all my repressed anger and frustration surfacing. My helplessness was suffocating me. I plunged away from the desk, forgot the uncontained water and splashed into it, sending fish flying about the room.

"Vortexdamn you!' I shouted, venting my rage on the Mirage Makers. 'Do you think a poisoned baby is going to do you any good? Why don't you find some way of getting me out of this? Or at least send me something useful, like a – a – a book!'

For a moment I continued to stand, hands clenched by my sides, and then calm prevailed.

I bent to pick up the fish flopping on the floor and stuffed them back into what was left of the water.

The morning after the poisoning attempt, I didn't have to look far to see what changes had occurred during the night. The fish and all the other useless additions to the decor had gone. Instead, the room was lined from ceiling to floor with bookshelves, each shelf packed with vellum-bound volumes and scrolls.

I had never seen such a collection outside of the Public Library in Tyr; it was rare for even the most scholarly of individuals to have more than three or four treasured volumes. Copying a book cost money and not many people could afford them.

I rolled off my pallet and ran my eye along the roughly tooled spines of the closest shelf: all were written in Kardi. The first book was a compendium on Kardi freshwater fish, with illustrations. The next was a tome consisting mainly of dates and figures and, as far as I could make out, it detailed the heights and times of the coastal tides of Kardiastan for their entire five-year cycle. The next was a philosophical work, with a title I couldn't understand, written by a past Mirager; something, I thought, about the morality of using supernatural powers on people who had none.