The Heart of the mirage

CHAPTER THIRTY

Brand howled his anguish once more and plunged his arm into the putrescence, groping blindly in the poison, refusing to feel the acid agony shrivelling his arm to irreparably cripple him. He managed to touch me, but his fingers slithered on my slime-covered skin, couldn't grasp me as I slid away from him. His weakened fingers skidded over my breast, my neck and the torn side of my face. I couldn't do anything to help him. I scarcely comprehended what he risked in his attempt to save me. Then, as I slipped away, he hooked fingers into the limb of the beast sucking at my breast and pulled it from me.

I fell to the bottom of the foulness, came in contact with the rock beneath the sore, felt myself enclosed in a cocoon of safety. The pain didn't disappear – there were too many raw and torn patches for that – but the agony reduced itself to a manageable level. Better still, I felt the comfort and love of the Mirage Makers. Rationality returned.

They piled concepts into my head, pictures, feelings. Concept: Time. Need. We can keep you safe here, but you cannot stay. You will soon need air. You

must have help. They offered me nothing more than a temporary security.

I said, There is no one.

That was when I saw Temellin in my head, his image startlingly clear.

Temellin? What could he have to do with this? He is too far away. I do not know where he is.

The next picture was of an embryo, and the urge I felt was a desperate desire to follow the child.

Follow the child? I assumed they referred to Pinar's son, and despaired. What kind of advice was that? I was doomed…

Another picture: this one showed me driving my sword tip into my cabochon. Garis had said something about that, hadn't he? But someone else had told me that if you cracked your cabochon, your life leaked away. None of this made sense! I beat down the panic once more.

I asked, remarkably calm, You wish me to die?

Emotion: Exasperation.

I don't know what you mean! Panic crept back, nibbling away the edges of my sanity.

They tried again: images of Temellin, of an unborn child, of a sword in my cabochon.

But for these beings, language was constricting, not liberating. Away from the Shiver Barrens, unable to use the sands, without a human form, how could they use words?

And yet they found a way. They used the only things available: the creatures of the Ravage. Goddess knows what pain it cost them, but the Mirage Makers forced the deformed jaws of those monsters to articulate laboriously formed words, spoken words, that I could hear.

'Shadow self. Your shade.' A grinding, scraping Ravage voice. Four words that chilled my soul.

And then, 'Release your essensa.'

I knew that word. Someone had said something once… Aemid? Temellin? The legions can never kill our essensa. All living things have a life-force we call the essensa. And the word had been in one of the books I'd read, too, but I couldn't remember the context.

'Put your sword through your cabochon. You will not die. We want to save you.' Kind words uttered in ugly rasping sounds, sentiments at variance with vicious teeth and foul breath and gleeful eyes.

Irresolute, I dithered. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps it wasn't the Mirage Makers who spoke. And if it were them, I should still question their motives.

But I was dazed and in pain and tired of the struggle. I looked down at my hand, surprised to see I still clutched my sword. I swapped it to my right hand and looked at my cabochon. Barely any colour remained; my power was almost gone. A shade? It was the best offer I had. The only offer.

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.

'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.