The Heart of the mirage

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The man squatted down at the edge of the wharf so that he came into my view. He was thinner than he had been, but his brown eyes – so like mine – tilted at the corners and his hair, as usual, was in disarray. He said, 'I believe there is someone here I want to see, Bitran.'

Bitran gave me an uncertain glance, and I nodded. He gestured at the companionway. 'The Magoria is in there.'

Temellin took a coin from his purse. 'Go and buy yourself a drink, Bitran. In fact, buy several.' He swung himself down into the boat and walked across to the top of the companionway.

'That was very high-handed of you, Tem,' I said. 'It is his boat.'

He was looking down at me, but with the sunlight behind him, I couldn't see his face. He said, T wish I dared to be just as high-handed with you. Derya, why7. Why do you feel you have to leave?' He came down the steps, ducking his head to avoid the low beams. The cabin was tiny and with both of us standing, we were only half a pace apart, yet he didn't touch me. 'Where's Brand?'

'Delivering our shleths to the man who's agreed to buy them. He won't be back for several hours. I have to go, Tem. You know why. I don't think sisters should marry brothers.'

His face took on a look of stubborn resistance and genuine bafflement. 'You could still stay. And we're having a child. I love you, Derya. I want you around. I want my son. Derya, for pity's sake – I have lost two of my children, don't let me lose the third. Please.'

'You won't lose him! I will send him to you. Or better still, you send someone to pick him up.'

His surprise, and his paradoxical hurt, filled the cabin. 'You'd give him up, just like that?'

I feigned indifference, hiding the truth in the way I phrased the next sentence. 'I don't think I'm cut out to be much of a mother.' Perhaps I wasn't, but when I thought of this growing life, tenderness seeped into my heart. Treachery from within.

Is this how Wendia once felt about me? And Aemid? Wendia died knowing she had failed to protect her daughter, and that must have been a terrible way to end one's conscious moments. And Aemid lived, knowing she had failed me. Perhaps I was only just now beginning to understand her anguish. And I was about to fail my son as a mother too…

Melete give me strength.

I knew I couldn't keep him, this boy of ours. He was Kardiastan's heir. I had a flash of memory: my hands soaked in Pinar's blood, her son cupped in my palms. Why was my life studded with separations of children from their mothers? My son would never know me. That gnawing at my insides, it was painful.

'But why must you go at all?' Temellin asked. The emotion he allowed me to feel was more puzzlement than anger. 'Is it because you haven't forgiven me for my disbelief?'

'No. Goddess knows, I gave you grounds enough to disbelieve! But I do have reasons for leaving Kardiastan. Half a dozen of them.'

'I don't need half a dozen. I need just one that makes sense to me. And – and the one you did have is not valid. This brother-sister thing. Derya -' He stood straighter, made an effort to be more in command of himself. 'I'll give you a reason to stay, the best I can think of. You aren't Shirin. You aren't my sister. We were wrong. You are Sarana, my cousin, Miragerin of Kardiastan.'

I went cold all over. He knew! And then: He loves me enough to tell me? Goddess, I didn't deserve that. I swallowed. 'How did you find out?'

His smile quirked with irony. 'You told me in your letter. When you hinted that the Mirage Makers mentioned to you their need of an unborn child. I couldn't believe they would give that information to Shirin. They hadn't given it to Korden when he walked the Shiver Barrens, and at that time he was my heir, so why would they give it to you? I tried to tell myself it was because you were bearing my child, but somehow it just didn't seem right. Especially when, in the end, it was Pinar's son who became a Mirage Maker. So I started to think about things. I remembered what you said about your memories of your childhood in Kardiastan, and suddenly it seemed more of a description of a fight involving a howdah. And then I went to Zerise again. I pestered her, and finally she admitted she was uneasy about you being Shirin. It seems you have Sarana's eyes.'

I waited for him to go on, to tell me how Solad had made a traitor of himself, but he said nothing, to spare me the pain, perhaps. He must have worked it out, of course. Maybe he'd always suspected it; Solad was the one who had sent the ten Magoroth children away, after all.

I stared at him, emotions suppressed, stomach churning. Was he truly willing to sacrifice all he was, all he had – for me? Sweet Elysium, he was prepared to trust me with his landl With his people.

This was what it was to love.

Something fundamental inside me shifted position, ¦ grinding into me with deep-felt, intense pain. I knew myself inadequate, less than he was. I loved, but my love was a damaged thing, torn by so many betrayals,

folded and put away and ignored until now, when I wanted to take it out again and shake it free – only to find it flawed and tattered, creased with memories of where it had been, of what had been done to it, of the pain it had caused. '..¦¦›!

He touched my shattered cheek with the back of his hand. 'You are beautiful,' he said, and perhaps I was to him.

My eyes filled with tears. He took me in his arms, holding me gently, shielding his feelings, as if afraid the strength of his passion would frighten me away. 'Stay,' he said. 'Be our Miragerin.'

'Tem,' I said, 'I couldn't take away from you what you are! You are the Mirager of Kardiastan. More than that, you are the ruler everyone wants; not me. I'm not the person for this land.'

'You want power. I know you do.'

'But not this way.'

'When you walked the Shiver Barrens, what were you told? Did they show you a Mirager bestowing cabochons? Did they tell you the conjurations for it?'

I nodded. • 'Then you were given a Mirager's sword. And a mandate to rule. You just didn't realise what you had been told.' He pulled back a little so he could see my face. 'Derya, you are the rightful Mirager, not I.'

'I don't want it.'

He saw something in my expression I hadn't known was there. He exclaimed, bewildered, 'You – you knew all along! That's why you are leaving, isn't it? Damn it, you make me so ashamed. I didn't trust you, and all along you knew what you could have had.'

I interrupted. 'Not all along. And I'm no saintly handmaiden to the gods, either, Tem.' Just a better person than I once was. I'd felt the claws and teeth of

evil in my flesh, and the horror of it was still with me. In the creatures of the Ravage, I'd glimpsed the soul of what I had once nearly become, and I hadn't liked it. I wanted to be better than that, better than I had been – but there were limits to how much one could change in a single lifetime.

I said, with brutal honesty, 'I'm doing this for myself as much as for you. I don't want to rule Kardiastan. I'm not the person for the job: you are. The Mirage Makers may have given me the sword, but they haven't taken yours away. You still have a mandate to rule.'

He absorbed that, feeling my truth. And said, 'We could rule jointly. As husband and wife. How much better if Kardiastan had two Mirager swords! I almost wrecked everything when I lost mine.'

'You were going to kill yourself, weren't you? I saw the relief in your eyes, but I didn't recognise it for what it was. You were going to sacrifice yourself for your land because you'd lost your sword, and now, in a way, you want to do it all over again. For me. Well, I won't let it happen.'

'It's not a sacrifice! Not if we rule jointly. We need never fear the loss of a sword again. We'd have two! And you would stop me making so many mistakes. The only person I've ever been able to rely on is Korden – but I don't see eye to eye with him on so many things. Derya, I've been so damned lonely!

With that, he almost persuaded me. Almost. But something else prevailed. Commonsense? Selfishness? 'Tern, Tern – it wouldn't work. Think about it for a minute, the practicalities. We'd end up hating one another. It's one thing to make a sacrifice, it's quite another to live with the results. We want the same

things, you and I, but neither of us is big enough to

'¦"'-… ¦.»*

share them. And I'd never be accepted by most of the Magoroth. I killed one of the Ten, for a start!' Every word was the truth, and every word was a destruction of desire, a slash across the dream of a future. 'I bet you and Korden had yet another argument when you told him you were coming here to see me. Especially when you should be off fighting the legions.'

His anger stirred, a remnant ember glowing in the cold ashes of the rage that had once led him to fling his sword at me. 'You can't turn me down because of Korden!'

'No. Tern, I'm – I'm going to Tyrans. I'll work for Kardiastan there; I'm going to bring down the Exaltarch from within. I'm going to halt the slavery.'

'That's ridiculous! I can't let you go.'

'Tem, you can't keep me here against my will.' i' We stared at each other, and I felt the ember flicker as his anger burned brighter. 'Skies above,' he said, 'have you thought how dangerous it will be for you in Tyrans? Once the Stalwarts return to Tyr, the Brotherhood will be looking for you. And you would take our child into such danger?'

'It's no safer for me in Kardiastan. Less so, in fact, because I can't stay in the Mirage, because of the Ravage. It will be years before Pinar's son is strong enough to help the other Mirage Makers get rid of it. And even here, outside of the Mirage – well, the Tyranians must be scouring the streets looking for Ligea by now, and that's just when they think I'm on their side. You aren't going to take back your land overnight. You'll have to fight the legions every inch of the way, and there are still so few of you. I'd be no safer here than in Tyrans.'

'We need you, Derya. We need your Magoroth strength. J need you.' His voice shook. The ember of

anger was a glowing coal now; I could feel its heat. 'You still haven't given me a reason I can accept.'

'Tern, I have something to do in Tyr. Something I need to do. Until I have, I shan't be able to live at peace. I love you more than I can say, but I don't want to stay here.'

'There's something you're not telling me.' His shrewd brown eyes narrowed. 'What is it – guilt? You've guessed -?'

'About Solad? Yes. Had you realised he was the traitor before all this happened?'

'I wondered. I always wondered. It seemed so… convenient that he sent the Ten to safety just before the massacres. And as I was growing up I heard people say he was not acting normally after the death of his wife and daughter. And then Zerise told me long ago that Solad had his sword with him that night of the Shimmer Feast. She saw him kill legionnaires with it. But it was forbidden to bring swords into the hall, so that was strange too.' He scowled. 'A salve to his twisted conscience, I suppose. As if taking a few Tyranian soldiers with him could make up for what he did.'

'I've been unlucky in my fathers, haven't I? And I do feel I owe Kardiastan something because of that. But even that's not what drives me. It's more personal than that.' I took a deep breath. 'It's a need to do something about what was done to me. They wronged me, Temellin. Gayed, Rathrox Ligatan and Bator Korbus. They murdered my true mother in front of my eyes.' That golden woman, splattered with crimson. She died under the swords of Gayed's men while I ' watched, too young to understand what I saw. 'They turned my true father into a traitor and made him commit a crime, the immensity of which I can't even begin to imagine. They twisted him until there was no

way out but to join those he betrayed in death.' That laughing, loving man holding out his arms for me while I ran barefoot, across an agate floor, towards his embrace. 'They enslaved my people. They took me from what was left of my family, to raise me themselves. I was only a child when they began a deliberate plan to… deform me. They deprived me of everything that was mine, and distorted my life into something that was foul. And as they did it, as they watched me grow up, they mocked me.'

I met his eyes, begging him to understand. 'Then they threw me back into the arena, intending me to finish what they had begun. To have me kill my own people. My own cousin, the Mirager. What they did was evil. Vile, by anyone's standards. And they almost succeeded. They shouldn't be allowed to triumph. Do you understand?'

He nodded. 'Yes. Of course I do.' He cupped my face, touching me gently, belying the ever-present anger. 'But you can fight them here. We can defeat them here.'

'Perhaps. But it won't bring me the satisfaction I crave. Bator Korbus would still occupy the Exaltarch's seat in Tyr, and Rathrox Ligatan would still run the Brotherhood. Every year there would be another attempt on your borders. They would blockade your ports, sink your fishing fleet. Your whole rule will be one of battle and invasion. Is that what you want? Continually having to breed more Magoroth to throw against an enemy who can draw on resources all the way from here to the Western Reaches? Is that what I would be delivering our son to?'

The ember of anger flared, to unite with his scorn. 'I have an army. And I have fifty Magoroth swords behind me. You have no one except Brand, and you

think you can make a difference in Tyrans? You think you can help us by being in Tyr – one lone woman against the Exaltarch? Are you mad?

'I won't be one lone woman for very long, Temellin. For every two citizens of Tyrans, there is a slave.'

His breath caught as he considered the enormity of what I planned to do, and the fire of his anger seared. I think he knew then that I needed justice for myself more than I needed him. More than I needed his son. How could such knowledge not hurt him? He was willing to sacrifice all he was for me, and I rejected that offering. Worse, the sacrifice I made, of my own chance at happiness, was made not for him, nor for our son – but for myself. I needed to bring down the men who had wronged me. I needed to obliterate the system that had made it possible. And I was willing to pay heavily.

He stepped away from me, but in the confines of that cabin there wasn't far he could go. I was so aware of the rage flaming through him.

'Yes,' he said. 'That is a reason I understand. There was a time when I burned with a similar passion for revenge. I grew out of it. Perhaps you're even right, we could become two reed monkeys fighting over the same stretch of rushes if you stayed, but I doubt it. I think what we had would have helped us rise above such pettiness.'

What we had. I heard the past tense and lowered my head so he wouldn't see the anguish in my eyes. 'I want justice. Not revenge.'

He snorted. 'Justice, revenge, whatever you call it. You will find out one day just how high the price you are going to pay really is.'

'I already know.'

'No. You haven't the faintest idea.' His scorn was obliterating, wiping my words away.

And, of course, he was right. I thought I knew, but I really had no idea at all…

If I had known, I would never have started.

By now his anger and his love and his hurt were so inextricably mixed, it was hard for him to pull them apart and for me to recognise them. When he showed me the way he felt, it was an assault on my senses, driving breath from my lungs. I turned away from him, leaning against the hull, resting my forehead against the boards. The cabin was awash with too much emotion.

There was a long silence until both of us had more control.

'Will you ever come back?' he asked finally.

'Yes, yes, of course.' I turned to face him. 'To see you – to see you both. And one day I shall come as Exaltarch, as the ruler of a State coming to visit a fellow monarch and his son.'

He stared, disbelieving. 'You're out of your mind! The Exaltarch? Cabochon, Derya -! How can you even envisage that? With a ragtag army of slaves more used to wielding a scythe or a pickaxe or a broom, against the empire's finest legionnaires? That's insane! And stupid. And it's not like you to be stupid.'

'I spent a lot of time warded in a room with no one to talk to, day after day. I did a lot of thinking about this. I have no intention of being stupid.'

There was another long silence. I could almost feel him dampening down his rage, smothering the flame, depriving it of fuel. It was still there, though, smouldering in some dark, deep recess of his soul. It always would be. What I was doing to him was just another form of betrayal and I was uniquely placed to know how much fury betrayal generates. Goddess, I thought, we are becoming experts at hurting one another.

Then his lips twitched, but there was more sardonic appreciation than amusement in the result. 'Sarana – you always were a little devil. I used to hate playing with you. Who'd have thought that would change so much?' He gave a laugh, half rueful, half bitter. 'Or maybe nothing's changed. You used to make me cry then, too. Ah, Derya – no, Sarana – fate played a nasty trick on us.'

'Do I go with your blessing then, Tem?'

He shook his head. 'Blessing? Never! But I don't know how to stop you.'

'No. That's because there is no way.' I let him feel the truth of that.

He threw up his hands in resignation. 'So when do you leave Ordensa?'

'We were just waiting for you to arrive. We'll sail tomorrow morning.'

He put his head on one side, regarding me with eyes that had lost their laughter and a gaze that hungered. 'I'm not your brother any more. Is that going to make any difference to how you spend the next few hours?'

I swear my heart stopped beating. 'Ah, yes. Um, it certainly could do.'

We both knew this time would be different. Our need was there, but the joyous sparkle had gone, and we both doubted we'd ever get it back.

But we still loved, oh, yes; only it was such a dark, grieving love.

No one gets to this point in writing a book without help, and I have been lucky enough to have had enthusiastic people supporting me all the way. Top of the list is always my agent, Dorothy Lumley, who has read this particular book so many times without ever losing her enthusiasm for it. My editor Stephanie Smith at HarperCollins Australia, and Kim Swivel, my copy editor, have helped to make it better, even when I thought I was done. And many thanks to my first readers whose appreciation kept me going, and whose criticism and eye for holes is so much appreciated: in this case my fellow Voyager authors Russell Kirkpatrick and Karen Miller; Alena S., Fiona McL., bookseller Mark T. And lastly, thanks to Perdy Phillips for the wonderful map and Shane Parker for the gorgeous cover.

Many years ago, when my own children were very young, I heard for the first time two stories, from opposite sides of the globe. One told the tragedy of stolen babies raised by those who had murdered their mothers, inevitably indoctrinated with the very beliefs their true parents had died resisting. The second story,