by Glenda Larke
‘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? ‘Tem, Tem—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. Tem, 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.’
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. I 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.’
‘Tem, 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.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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, equally tragic and just as true, told how several generations of children were forcibly taken from their loving, caring families to be raised by strangers. They were told to forget who they had been and where they had come from, to forget their language, their culture and their people; indeed to denigrate their very origins.
Ligea’s story is my way of saying sorry to all those mothers and their children; my way of paying homage to los desaparecidos, the Disappeared Ones of Argentina, and to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Australia. As a mother, I have wept for you.
About The Author
Glenda is an Australian who now lives in Malaysia, where she works on the two great loves of her life: writing fantasy and the conservation of rainforest avifauna. She has also lived in Tunisia and Austria, and has at different times in her life worked as a housemaid, library assistant, school teacher, university tutor, medical correspondence course editor, field ornithologist and designer of nature interpretive centres. Along the way she has taught English to students as diverse as Korean kindergarten kids and Japanese teenagers living in Malaysia, Viennese adults in Austria and engineering students in Tunis. If she has any spare time (which is not often), she goes birdwatching; if she has any spare cash (not nearly often enough), she visits her daughters in Scotland and Virginia and her family in Western Australia.
Visit Glenda Larke at:
www.glendalarke.com
For information about Glenda Larke and her books, plus all the latest science fiction news, visit: ‘Voyager Online’: www.voyageronline.com.au the website for lovers of science fiction and fantasy.
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Other books by Glenda Larke
ISLES OF GLORY TRILOGY
The Aware (1)
Gilfeather (2)
The Tainted (3)
The Isles of Glory Trilogy
The Aware
Book One
‘I almost regretted having Awareness. Without it, I wouldn’t have noticed a thing; I would have been as oblivious to the danger as everyone else.’
Blaze Halfbreed doesn’t like Gorthan Spit, but she’s being paid to find an enslaved Cirkasian woman. A woman needed by the Keepers to further their political ambitions.
When Blaze sees dunmagic running over the floor in the taproon of The Drunken Plaice, she knows trouble is not far away. Could it be in the form of the three tall, very handsome men at other tables? Just what is their business here?
Her search for the Cirkasian takes Blaze deep into Gorthan Spit, and she
is horrified to unravel a threat to all the Isles of Glory…and a more immediate threat to her own life.
Could the key to it all lie with an ancient legend of vanished islands?
Gilfeather
Book Two
‘I first met Blaze and Flame the day before I murdered my wife…I wouldn’t be recounting any of this, except Blaze insists I must. She says it’s important that you Kellish people understand the Isles…’
Branded a murderer and banished by his people, Gilfeather is unwittingly caught up in Blaze and Flame’s dangerous quest. He’d much rather be going home to the Roof of the World.
Blaze and Flame have fled Gorthan Spit and are searching for in the Isles of Glory…
As they hunt their quarry, problems multiply. Is there something wrong with Flame…can she be trusted?
The Tainted
Book Three
‘I plunged into the darkness…When I emerged, I was on the other side of death, in a life about which I understood nothing. I was Ruarth Windrider and I was human.’
The balance of power in the Isles of Glory is threatened by the growing strength of the Keeper Isles. The alien ghemphs are forced to take sides, ending generations of neutrality. And it seems that Ruarth Windrider’s difficulties have only just begun—Flame is not at all happy to see him, and Blaze Halfbreed has disappeared.
Again this backdrop of upheaval, the selver-herder Gilfeather and the patriarch Tor Ryder strive to find a way to destroy magic…all magic.
And in Kells, Anyara Teron dreams of voyages of discovery…
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